At the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Paralympic Games, the biggest debate surrounding the event has little to do with sport.

This year’s Paralympics represent the first major international sporting event since the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi in which Russia has competed under its national flag. The ban included the recent Olympic Games, where Russia and Belarus were not allowed to send teams.

Six Russian and four Belarusian para-athletes are competing at the Paralympics, marking the end of a 12-year period of exclusion rooted first in state-sponsored doping and then Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The decision to let Russia and Belarus back in has sparked heated public debate. People are asking hard questions about fairness, disability rights and who gets to decide the rules of international sport.

While some international sport federations cling to the idealistic notion that sport and politics are separate, this situation demonstrates the deeply entrenched role of geopolitics in major sporting events.

Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter explicitly prohibits political demonstrations and displays. Yet the reality for those at the Games is very different.

Read more: The IOC’s ban of a Ukrainian athlete over his helmet reveals troubling double standards

Russia returns to the Paralympics

In 2022, Russian athletes competed under the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) flag rather than their national flag. This sanction was already in place as punishment for the preceding Russian doping scandal.

However, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfolded in the lead-up to the Games, the IPC went further, ruling that results for Russian and Belarusian athletes would not be counted in........

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