MOSCOW, October 3. /TASS/. The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has turned Russian Paralympic athletes into virtual refugees after ruling that they be allowed to compete internationally only under a neutral status and to suspend the membership of the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC), Irina Viner, president of the Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation, said on Tuesday.

The IPC General Assembly at its September 27 meeting in Bahrain ruled to suspend the RPC’s membership status within the IPC indefinitely and cleared Russian Para athletes to take part in international tournaments but strictly as neutrals only. The next Summer Paralympic Games will be held in Paris between August 28 and September 8, 2024.

"What have they done to the Paralympians?" Viner asked rhetorically when speaking to journalists. "First they barred them from the Paralympic Games, which was a case of ordinary fascism, plain and simple."

"But now they have kicked the Russian Paralympic Committee out [of the world body] and cleared only certain athletes [for competition]. They have been relegated to a team of [stateless] refugees who now represent no one," the sports official lamented.

Russian Para-athletes had been set to take part in the Beijing Paralympics in 2022 until the IPC decided to suspend their participation due to Russia’s involvement in the ongoing developments in Ukraine.

On November 16, 2022, the IPC Extraordinary General Assembly voted to suspend the Russian Paralympic Committee’s membership in the organization. The RPC filed a motion on December 26, 2022 contesting the IPC General Assembly’s ruling to indefinitely suspend Russian Para-athletes from competing in international sports tournaments.

RPC’s ongoing spat with IPC

On August 7, 2016, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) decided to bar the entire Russian team from taking part in the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on August 23, 2016 upheld the IPC’s ruling that had come on the heels of a report delivered a month earlier by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Independent Commission, chaired by Canadian sports law professor Richard McLaren, which substantiated doping allegations involving Russian Paralympians.

Besides collectively punishing the Russian national team by banning it from the Rio Games, the IPC also decided to suspend the RPC’s membership in the international organization.

However, the team of Russian athletes, led by RPC head Pavel Rozhkov, was allowed to participate in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where it finished in 4th place in the overall medals standings among the rest of the national participants.

Para athletes from Russia also participated in the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, with a neutral status, dubbed as the Neutral Paralympic Athletes (NPA), given that the RPC’s membership in the IPC was still suspended at the time.

Russia’s so-called "neutral" team of Para athletes brought home a total of 24 medals from PyeongChang, including eight gold, 10 silver and six bronze, ranking second in the overall medal count at the 2018 PyeongChang Paralympics, after only the US national team.