EU urges halt to Russia’s creep-back into sports events

Russia was abusing sports for war propaganda, the EU has warned in the wake of its Olympic comeback, amid a wider debate on cultural boycotts of rogue states.

“Sport must not … be used for political propaganda,” said EU sports commissioner Glenn Micallef in a European Parliament hearing in Strasbourg on Wednesday (29 April).

“Flags, anthems, and uniforms are not neutral … Russia continues to instrumentalise sport for political purposes,” he said.

The EU has endorsed a sports, arts, and science boycott of Russia since its full invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

And it will not compete in the World Cup despite cozy relations between Russian president Vladimir Putin, US president Donald Trump, and the ‘FIFA’ world-football chief Gianni Infantino, in a sign of its ongoing toxic image.

But it did break a long-standing International Olympic Committee (IOC) boycott when it was allowed to compete under its flag at the 2026 Winter Paralympics in Cortina, Italy, in March where Russian athletes won eight medals.

The World Curling body let Russians compete again in January.

The ‘FIDE’ world-chess federation also let Russians back in December 2025.

And the Venice Biennale art-festival in Italy in May caused controversy by letting Russia set up its own-flag pavilion for the first time since 2022.

“Allowing them [Russians] is a political choice,” said Micallef in Strasbourg, referring to the IOC decision.

Austrian centre-left Hannes Heide MEP said: “We stand with Ukrainian athletes. Putin is using sport as a part of his military campaign”.

Finish centre-right MEP Pekka Toveri and German liberal MEP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann also spoke out against sports-washing of Russia’s war crimes.

“Russia is trying to get back to the world’s stage in sports and cultural events. In this way it gets prominent support from the International Olympic Committee,” said Strack-Zimmermann.

And Moscow has showed it takes cultural battles seriously by lobbying, via the former Hungarian government, to get Russia’s FIDE chess boss, Arkady Dvorkovich, off the hook in the 20th round of Russia sanctions.

For its part, the EU Commission has pulled some €2m in Venice Biennale funding in punishment for the Russia pavilion.

Meanwhile, Russia has also been banned from the Eurovision Song Contest since 2022, which is run by the European Broadcasting Union in Geneva, and which the EU has endorsed.

But at the same time, the Commission classifies calls to boycott Israel over its war crimes in Gaza, for instance from Eurovision, as a form of antisemitism, prompting human rights activists to cry double standards.

And for their part, the populist Patriots for Europe group decried any curbs on cultural events, speaking at Wednesday’s EU Parliament hearing.

The group was weakened by the fall of its founder, former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, in elections on 12 April.

But it still called for Russia to be let in out from the cold.

“Sport, music, art, culture have always been vehicles and instruments for dialogue between people. It is a time to open up, not close,” said Italian far-right ‘patriot’ Paolo Borchia.