An international sports body has welcomed Russia back under its flag while Russia keeps killing Ukraine's athletes and civilians. The World Archery Federation has lifted restrictions on Russian athletes, allowing them to compete with their country's identity, including under the Russian flag and anthem, the federation announced.

Russia has killed more than 760 Ukrainian athletes and coaches since the start of the full-scale war, with many others made refugees or losing loved ones to strikes on civilians, and some who took up arms without combat experience. Among them is Ukrainian archer Oleksandr Onyshchuk, a master of sport and European champion, killed fighting the occupiers.

What World Archery decided

The federation acted on an Olympic ruling. Its Executive Board met online on 14 August to review the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) 7 July decision, which confirmed that earlier recommendations restricting Russian athletes no longer applied, then lifted the restrictions on Russian athletes, teams, and officials at its events.

The Russians may now compete fully. They can take part under their national flag and anthem at events including the Archery World Cup and World Championships, and the 2022 restrictions on the Russian flag and anthem were removed, in line with a similar decision on Belarus in May. The federation said participation remains subject to standard eligibility, anti-doping, host-country, and visa requirements, and that it supports the Ukrainian archery community and all affected by the war.

Ukraine calls it sportswashing

For Ukraine, the reinstatement serves Russia's propaganda. Allowing Russian athletes into international competition is a means of sportswashing, spreading disinformation, and legitimizing the aggression against Ukraine before foreign audiences, while presenting Russia as still part of the civilized world.

Ukraine also points to who Russia sends. Ukrainian intelligence has documented Russian athletes who are direct participants in the war, including a lieutenant colonel in Russia's armed forces and a deputy brigade commander who competed internationally, according to Ukraine's Defense Intelligence.

Ukraine's National Olympic Committee called the IOC decision behind the reinstatement premature and unjustified and has appealed it to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The archery ruling arrives as Russia's strikes keep killing Ukrainian civilians and athletes in the war that the returning competitors' flag represents.

World Boxing has stripped away the last restrictions on Russian competitors, clearing them to fight under their national flag rather than as neutrals, Reuters reported. The move brings the sport into line with a wider loosening across international competition, as the Olympic movement edges Russia back toward the Games while its war on Ukraine grinds on.

Boxing lifts the neutral-status rule

World Boxing's executive committee approved the change at a meeting that also discussed the allocation of major competitions in the 2027-29 cycle, which take in the qualifying route to the Los Angeles 2028 Games. 

 "The ExCo accepted that Russian athletes would now take part in World Boxing competitions like boxers from any other national federation," the body said.

he governing body attached only a monitoring commitment, none of it tied to the war. It said it would "strictly monitor the behaviour of Russian delegations during events as well as compliance with the anti-doping protocols." That pledge to police Russian anti-doping sits oddly beside Russia's own record, since WADA recently closed an eight-year case into the country's state-run doping program with hundreds of athlete sanctions.

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Sport keeps reopening its doors to Russia

The boxing decision follows the International Olympic Committee provisionally reinstating Russia's Olympic body this month, clearing Russia's path back toward the 2028 Los Angeles Games. It caps a run of federations doing the same through 2026: artistic gymnastics scrapped its restrictions in May, muaythai restored Russian flags and anthems alongside wrestling, judo, sambo and taekwondo days later, and tennis never dropped the neutral pathway at all.

Not every sport has bent the same way. World chess went in the opposite direction in June, when the International Chess Federation suspended the Russian Chess Federation, the first time it had stripped its most powerful member of its membership rights.