The decision lifts all restrictions on Belarusian or Russian athletes, except for standard anti-doping controls and background checks. World Aquatics President Husain Al Musallam said that “pools and open water remain places where athletes from all nations can come together in peaceful competition.”

The timing was inconvenient. Ukraine was supposed to face Russia in a Water Polo World Cup Division 2 seventh-place match the same day in Malta.

The Ukrainian water polo team refused to play in protest, resulting in a 5-0 default win for Russia.

The World Aquatics decision provoked immediate outrage from Ukrainian athletes, but it was not a surprise.

Russia’s gradual reinstatement into world sport is the logical terminus of a process running since at least the autumn of 2024, driven by legal architecture, voting mathematics, institutional self-interest, and money — most of it Russian — embedded in international sport governance.

Over 350 Ukrainian citizens have been killed or injured by Russian missile and drone strikes from April 1-9.

1. Sanctions didn’t hold for long

The earliest concessions came within months of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. By spring 2023, fencing, judo, wrestling, canoeing and taekwondo had all opened their doors to Russian and Belarusian athletes under neutral status: no flag, no anthem, individual events only.

Tennis never closed its doors to individual players at all.

The framing was consistent across those early decisions: athletes should not be punished for the decisions of governments. That argument, deployed loudly and early, established a frame of reference that would prove almost impossible to dislodge.

Neutral athlete status is a recognised instrument in international sport, with precedent stretching back decades, and its adoption was defensible on the principle that individual athletes should not be categorically barred from competition solely on the basis of nationality.

The problem was not the neutral status itself. But the conditions attached to neutral participation were not stable. They were treated by Russian sports officials and their federation allies as a starting position rather than a limit.

From late 2024 onward, each condition was gradually stripped away.

In November 2025, World Aquatics permitted neutral Russian athletes to compete in relay and team artistic swimming events, a quiet but consequential breach of the team-event firewall.

28 Russian neutral athletes competed at the Short Course World Championships in Budapest, finishing second on the medal table with six golds and a world record in the men’s 4x100 medley relay.

In April 2025, fencing permitted neutral Russian teams to compete. In May, judo restored the use of the Belarusian flag.

Then in September 2025, the most significant single vote of the period came at the International Paralympic Committee’s General Assembly in Seoul. Member organisations voted against a motion to partially suspend Russia by 91 votes to 77, with 8 abstentions, and against maintaining Belarus’s partial suspension by 103 votes to 63, with 10 abstentions.

On September 28, 2025, the day the IPC restored Russia to full membership, Russia made its third-largest bombing campaign against Ukraine to date.

The body of a young girl was pulled from the rubble of her home in Kyiv. She was 12.

Both nations were fully restored to IPC membership.

Then, full legal backing for removing these sanctions accelerated things.

In December 2025, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) issued operative decisions in CAS 2025/A/11915 and CAS 2025/A/11931, finding that the International Ski Federation's blanket ban was discriminatory under its own statutes.

On the night of December 1, 2025, Russia launched a ballistic missile at Dnipro City in Ukraine. 4 people were killed, 40 more were wounded, 11 of them critically.

The next day, CAS decided a blanket ban against Russian athletes in skiing was discriminatory.

The IOC recommended Russian and Belarusian youth athletes compete under full national symbols at the Dakar Youth Olympics.

FIDE voted 61 to 51 to lift all chess sanctions.

By February 2026, 20 Russian and Belarusian neutral athletes competed at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. At the Paralympics that followed, Russia competed under its own flag, winning eight golds. Ukraine boycotted both ceremonies.

By February 2026, at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, 20 Russian and Belarusian neutral athletes competed across eight sports. At the Paralympics that followed, Russia competed under its own flag — per the IPC’s September decision — winning eight golds. Ukraine boycotted both ceremonies.

2. Why Russia was always going to win this

Russia’s progressive return to world sport was ensured by the structural power Russia has built, over decades.

The most important mechanism was personnel placement. Research by Play the Game, analysing all 40 Olympic International Federations, found that in addition to three federation presidents, Russia and Belarus together held four vice-presidencies, one secretary generalship and 20 board positions across those federations as of 2022. A peer-reviewed study by Krieger et al., published in the Asian Journal of Sport History & Culture in June 2023, confirmed this was an explicit government strategy.

Russian nationals were placed in federation leadership positions, with the specific goal of insulating Russian sport from future political pressure. It worked.

The federations where Russia had the deepest leadership stakes moved fastest toward readmission.

Marius Vizer had made Vladimir Putin the IJF's honorary president in 2008. #

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the IJF suspended Putin from that role on February 27, 2022. Vizer himself resisted the original ban, was re-elected unopposed for a sixth term in June 2025, and in November 2025, engineered Russia's full reinstatement by executive committee action, without a membership vote.

On November 27, 2025, the same day the IJF reinstated Russia, five Ukrainian soldiers groups were captured near the village of Zelenyi Hai.

After a brief interrogation, they were executed.

At FIDE, former Russian deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich steered the December 2025 vote to lift chess sanctions through a process that EUobserver both reported as procedurally compromised.

The day before the online General Assembly, FIDE circulated a seven-page memorandum to delegates arguing that continued exclusion of Russian and Belarusian teams would be "discriminatory and disproportionate" and warning of legal risk. It was presented as an independent legal opinion. FIDE did not disclose that its author, Claude Ramoni, had represented the suspended Russian Olympic Committee in multiple CAS proceedings since at least 2019.

3. Fencing as case study

Fencing was the starkest case. Alisher Usmanov has run the FIE since 2008, financing the federation through his International Charitable Foundation for the Future of Fencing to the tune of at least $98.5 million over 13 years. A single 2020 donation of CHF 5 million accounting for 93 percent of the federation’s entire income that year.

In practical terms, international fencing has become a financial dependency of a sanctioned Russian oligarch.

When EU sanctions were imposed on Usmanov in February 2022, he stepped back and installed Greek three-time Olympian Emmanuel Katsiadakis as interim president.

In November 2024, in Tashkent, Usmanov’s home city, he was re-elected to the position. Usmanov then self-suspended his powers again four days after his own re-election, returning the chair to Katsiadakis. The purpose, as one observer told The Sports Examiner, was “to prevent anyone from leading the sport” other than Usmanov.

Katsiadakis lasted until April 2025. He resigned, officially citing health reasons. Multiple FIE insiders told the New Voice of Ukraine and The Inquisitor Magazine that the real reason was his refusal to write a letter to President Trump requesting that Usmanov’s sanctions be lifted ahead of the LA 2028 Olympics.

He was replaced by Egypt’s Abdelmoneim El Husseiny. By that point, the FIE had already gutted its neutrality verification process, replacing independent background checks with athlete self-declarations, a move condemned in an open letter signed by 447 fencers from 40 countries, published by Global Athlete on July 17, 2025.

The federation that had been built on Usmanov’s money was never going to hold the line against Russia’s return.

On January 23, 2026, the FIE removed Estonia as host of the 2026 European Fencing Championships for refusing to grant visas to Russian and Belarusian athletes.

On January 23, 2026, the same day as the FIE punished Estonia for not granting visas to Russian athletes, Russia launched over 100 drones and ballistic missiles at Ukraine. At least six people were killed and 45 more were injured.

Russia has spent years cultivating alliances with Central Asian, Middle Eastern and African federations, many of which received development funding from Russian-aligned presidents. Usmanov’s own re-election result illustrated it: support came from Israel, Palestine, the Philippines, South Africa: a genuinely global coalition built over 15 years of financial investment.

The IPC vote in Seoul made the same arithmetic visible on the biggest stage: the coalition that voted to maintain sanctions was substantial. It was still outnumbered. The nations living closest to Russia’s war are a minority of the global sporting electorate.

4. CAS Rulings Help Russia

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is not an instrument of Russian policy. The logic of its rulings has been consistent: blanket nationality-based exclusions violate anti-discrimination provisions in federations’ own statutes.

But Russia has deployed this argument strategically, filing challenges against FIS, the International Biathlon Union, the International Luge Federation and others in coordinated succession. The luge case was the precedent-setter.

CAS case 2025/A/11479, decided on October 31, 2025, found that “the complete exclusion of Russian athletes was not a proportionate measure.”

The December 2025 FIS ruling went further. CAS cases 2025/A/11915 and 2025/A/11931, found that “the FIS Statutes require the FIS to be politically neutral and that the FIS Council did not provide sufficient legal justification for the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes and para-athletes.”

This overturned a democratic membership vote in favour of continuing the ban, making clear that even procedurally legitimate federation decisions could be voided by CAS on anti-discrimination grounds.

For those that had genuinely wanted to hold the line, the FIS ruling functioned as a final warning: your ban may not hold.

5. The holdouts

Three major federations have maintained meaningful restrictions as of April 2026. Understanding why they held matters as much as understanding why others folded.

World Athletics under Sebastian Coe has maintained the most absolute position: no neutral status, no individual exceptions, nothing. Coe first articulated the grounds in March 2023, citing “the death and destruction we have seen in Ukraine over the past year, including the deaths of some 185 athletes.” By July 2024, when Coe met President Zelenskyy in Kyiv, World Athletics reported the toll had exceeded 400 athletes and coaches killed.

Coe controls a federation with strong financial independence from Russian sources, a membership concentrated in nations with high political sensitivity to the conflict, and a legal argument CAS has not yet fully tested: World Athletics’ rules include specific provisions allowing exclusion on the basis of systematic doping non-compliance, not solely nationality, which provides a distinct legal basis from those overturned in the luge and FIS cases.

FIFA and UEFA have maintained Russia’s exclusion from the 2026 World Cup and all competitive football, though the picture is complicated. In a February 2026 interview, FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the ban “has not achieved anything, it has just created more frustration and hatred” That comment was read widely as the opening of a negotiation rather than a statement of settled policy.

The International Biathlon Union has maintained its ban and is currently defending a CAS challenge filed by Russian athletes in December 2025. Biathlon’s membership is dominated by Nordic and central European nations for whom the political stakes of readmission are highest, and the sport has limited financial exposure to Russian money.

But the IBU’s legal position after the FIS ruling is precarious. The IBU has acknowledged the challenge in its official communications without signalling confidence in the outcome.

On the night of April 13-14, 2026, hours before this article was published, Russia launched 133 missiles and drones at Ukraine.

When he became president of Congo-Brazzaville's football federation in 2018, he brought those skills with him. They led to sadly predictably results.

Mayolas has been sentenced to life imprisonment, in absentia. Interpol is hot on his heels France's financial intelligence unit is unpicking the wreckage.

Corrupt football federation presidents are a dime a dozen these days, but the Mayolas case is the most dramatic criminal prosecution of a sitting football chief we’ve seen for a while.

So who exactly is he, and how did he get this far?

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After scoring the goal, Amoura celebrated by mimicking a stiff, upright pose—a move that has been interpreted as mocking Michel Nkuka Mboladinga, a well-known DR Congo superfan known for standing motionless at matches. His pose is an homage to Patrice Lumumba, the former Congolese Prime Minister and independence hero assassinated in 1961.

This post is a guest piece by Karim Zidan, who runs my favourite sports newsletter, Sports Politika. I warmly encourage you to subscribe and support Karim’s work, as he continues to reveal the shady machinations that increasingly make sports a geopolitical tool.

Lumumba was a revolutionary independence leader and pan-Africanist who played a significant role in Congo’s transition from a Belgian colony to an independent state. He became Congo’s first elected prime minister but immediately faced a breakdown of order and, eventually, a coup. He was assassinated by Congolese soldiers under Belgian supervision in January 1961, with significant involvement and planning by Belgium and tacit approval from the United States, who saw him as a Cold War threat. At one point, the CIA had plotted his assassination, including schemes like poisoned toothpaste.

Despite his tragic demise, Lumumba was remembered as a standard bearer for decolonization and African liberation, as well as a cautionary tale of the sacrifices that come with challenging the Western overlords. So when Amoura, a fellow African as well as an Arab, mocked the DRC’s national hero, it was seen as disrespectful. He has since apologized, claiming he did not the understand the significance of the superfan’s pose. Nevertheless, it is a reminder of the deep political trauma running through Africa’s veins, and how that inevitably spills out on the football pitch.

When the Africa Cup of Nations was first held in 1957, it was an inherently political event. In June 1956, on the sidelines of the FIFA Congress in Lisbon, Egypt met with representatives from Sudan, South Africa, and Ethiopia to devise a plan to establish the Confederation of African Football (CAF), the governing body for football in Africa. The organization was a priority for Egypt’s charismatic military leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose “Free Officers” movement had ended Britain’s colonial rule over Egypt in 1952. Nasser viewed CAF and the subsequent AFCON tournament as a powerful propaganda tool that would help unite African nations against their colonial rulers.

In 1957, the inaugural Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) was held in Khartoum, Sudan. There was no qualification process; the tournament field consisted solely of the four founding members of the Confederation of African Football (CAF): Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and South Africa. South Africa was disqualified after insisting on selecting an all-white squad in accordance with its apartheid policy, a decision that granted Ethiopia a bye directly to the final. As a result, only two matches were played. Egypt was crowned the first continental champion after defeating host nation Sudan 2–1 in the semi-final and Ethiopia 4–0 in the final.

Egypt’s victory carried far more than mere national pride. The country had just emerged from the Suez Canal Crisis, during which British and French forces—acting in concert with Israel—invaded Egypt in an attempt to protect their interests in the recently nationalized canal. The ensuing international backlash forced a humiliating withdrawal, dealing Britain a severe blow to its legitimacy and global standing and marking one of the final nails in the coffin of its imperial ambitions. The fact that Egypt—newly free and independent—had won the inaugural competition so closely associated with decolonization became a powerful symbol for a burgeoning African continent.

Egypt has since continued to make AFCON history. The Arab world’s most populous country has won the event a record seven times, including three consecutive wins in 2006, 2008, and 2010.

However, the country has not managed to reclaim its former glory since the 2011 Arab Spring, which was the same year that Salah first appeared on the national team. Since then, Egypt has reached the finals on two occasions (2017 and 2021). In the 2021 edition of AFCON, Salah’s team came close to winning the cup but fell short in a penalty shootout against Sadio Mané’s Senegal.

Despite the loss, it had been Egypt’s best performance in years. In 2018, Egypt crashed out of the World Cup without winning a single match. The following year, Egypt hosted AFCON but failed to reach the quarter-final stage in a tournament plagued with scandals including accusations of sexual harassment against Salah’s teammate Amr Warda.

While Egypt is no longer as successful as it once was on the continent, countless other African countries attempted to emulate its sporting and political success at AFCON. Over the decades, countless African leaders have utilized AFCON as a tool for propaganda and self-aggrandizement. Among them was Mobutu Sese Seko, the infamous Congolese dictator whose coup ultimately led to Lumumba’s execution. Seko rechristened the DRC as Zaire and went on to establish a violent kleptocracy, amassing grotesque personal wealth at the expense of his impoverished population.

Seko was obsessed with turning Zaire into a sporting superpower. He hosted the 1974 edition of the African tournament, and spent lavishly on infrastructure to support the event and the national team. Zaire went on to win the tournament, though they performed terribly at that year’s World Cup. Seko later hosted the Rumble in the Jungle event pitting Muhammad Ali against George Foreman for the heavyweight championship. It was one of the most watched televised events at the time, breaking countless records.

Seko wasn’t the only dictator to take advantage of AFCON’s prestige. Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya hosted the event in 1982 while Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt won the event four times during his tenure in office. In 2012, Equatorial Guinea hosted the event, which served as international image-laundering exercises for one of the world’s longest-ruling dictators in Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

The latest AFCON host, Morocco, has also courted its fair share of controversy. The country, which is ruled by an Islamic monarchy that has reigned since 1631 and claims descent from the Prophet Muhammad, has spent the heavily in preparation for the 2026 AFCON and the 2030 World Cup. That spending resulted in a series of youth-led protests demanding significant improvements to public education and healthcare, while criticizing the government’s spending on football tournaments. Following the protests, the Moroccan government introduced a set of reforms intended to enhance political participation and improve social services.

Morocco is also tied in a long-standing dispute with the Western Sahara, a desert territory annexed by Morocco following Spain’s colonial departure in 1975. The Sahrawi people, an indigenous group native to the region, continue to seek independence, which Morocco vehemently refuses. Morocco administers about 80% of the disputed territory, including resource-rich areas with phosphates and fisheries. Morocco also has a deteriorating relationship with neighbour Algeria, with the latter claiming that Morocco was mining for phosphate on land belonging to Algeria. The border between the nations has remained closed since 1994, complicating matters for Algerian football fans looking to attend the tournament.

The final nail in AFCON’s shift away from its decolonization roots came on the even of the 2025 edition of the tournament, when CAF president Patrice Motsepe announced that would now take place every four years instead of biyearly. When making the announcement Motsepe was flanked by FIFA secretary general Mattias Grafström, a subtle confirmation that the decision was heavily influenced by the European powers at FIFA and UEFA, who hated that clubs had to release some of their most prominent African players mid-season to participate in the tournament.

Africans living on the continent have rarely had the opportunity to watch their star players perform in person. The biennial Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) was one of the few occasions when that aspiration became reality. Most of Africa’s leading footballers are based in Europe, competing in some of the world’s most lucrative leagues in England, France, and Germany. Yet European football authorities deemed even this arrangement unreasonable and exerted pressure on the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to extend the tournament cycle to four years. One could argue that AFCON’s increasing subordination to European interests amounts to a re-colonization of African football.

What began as a nationalist and pan-African project has, in this view, deteriorated into a second-tier event increasingly shaped by forces beyond Africa’s control.

The evidence, delivered to the New York State Gaming Commission (NYSGC) in 2023, identified approximately 280 trainers and owners who had purchased illicit substances from convicted veterinarian Seth Fishman, the central supplier in the largest horse-doping conspiracy ever prosecuted in the United States.

Read the full New York Focus investigation that broke this scandal here.

Despite receiving the material, the Commission did not initiate any disciplinary measure against those identified for more than two years. Trainers named in the FBI records continued to compete at New York venues, including Aqueduct, Belmont Park, Saratoga, and Yonkers Raceway, accumulating massive prize winnings during that period.

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Behind the walls of the affluent Buenos Aires suburb, investigators discovered a private heliport, stables housing Arabian thoroughbreds, and a climate-controlled garage sheltering fifty-four vehicles: Ferraris, Porsches, an Audi R8, and a collection of vintage automobiles.

The property's registered owners were Luciano Nicolás Pantano, a mid-level football administrator, and his retired mother. Their combined legal income could not have purchased a single Ferrari.

The raid came six months before Argentina defend their title at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. It represents the most active phase of a corruption investigation that prosecutors say involves more than $550 million laundered through Argentine football.

This all began with Twitter accusation by retired star striker Carlos Tevez.

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In the recordings, senior club officials discuss using a presidential luxury box at Morumbi Stadium to sell Shakira concert tickets off the books, openly acknowledging that the arrangement was clandestine and in violation of the club’s rules.

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But in October 2025, FIFA appointed the man who will design the process by which future Peace Prize winners will be selected.

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Filed in the Southern District of New York, the two cases, U.S. v. Aiello and U.S. v. Earnest, charge nearly two dozen individuals in a web of high-tech poker fraud, illegal sports betting, and financial crime.

Headlines seized on the celebrity aspect: the involvement of four of the New York Five Families, and the roles played by three NBA athletes and coaches. Miami Heat star Terry Rozier allegedly faked an injury to hit “under” bets on his own stats, former NBA champion Chauncey Billups was linked to the rigged poker ring, and former assistant coach Damon Jones allegedly supplied insider injury information.

But the court filings, running over 100 pages between them, reveal a far more sophisticated picture.

These are the five things you may have missed.

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Predrag Bošković (53), one of the most influential officials in the sport, who has already held several ministerial posts in his home country, was arrested in Podgorica and faces allegations of being a member of a criminal organisation.

This article was first published in The Inquisitor Magazine by Jens Weinreich. Please read and subscribe to his excellent work on sports and politics here.

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Clubs and academies were starving for funding, visibility, and international exposure for their young talents. Success stories like that of Yankuba Minteh at Brighton are few and far between.

Afriskaut’s pitch was compelling: sophisticated data analytics, high-quality video scouting reports, and a bridge to top-tier European clubs.

But beneath Afriskaut’s shiny presentation and glowing success stories from Nigeria, such as the lucrative transfer of Nigerian talent Victor Orakpo to OGC Nice, troubling elements soon emerged, eventually leading to accusations of exploitation.

This story is part of a broader collaborative investigation by Kicker, The Sports and Crime Briefing, and Público, uncovering the global system enabling the exploitation and trafficking of young African footballers. This project was carried out with support from Journalismfund Europe.

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On September 9, the club was hit with its third sanction in under 18 months, despite a recent legal victory over UEFA over the same issue. UEFA fined Brann around 207,000 Norwegian kroner (€17,625) for incidents which took place during an August Europa League qualifier.

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