Russia to raise question of IPC ban on Paralympians at UN

Russia is going to raise the question of debarring the Russian Paralympic team from the 2016 Rio Paralympics at the United Nations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.

“You all know about the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) decision to ban our team from the current Paralympics and the 2018 Winter Paralympic Games. Those who made that decision should be brought to account – the moral account at least,” the Russian foreign minister said.

“We are not going to leave it like that. Legal proceedings have got under way. We are going to discuss these actions further. They have violated the UN General Assembly principle that sport is above politics and that sport cannot be an area for any sort of discrimination, while here we are definitely dealing with discrimination along ethnic lines,” Lavrov stressed.

“These people do not know what they are doing, or it may be quite on the contrary,” the Russian foreign minister added.

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) suspended the Russian Paralympic Committee’s membership and barred Russian Paralympic athletes from the upcoming Paralympic Games following the now-infamous report by the WADA independent commission headed by sports law Professor Richard McLaren that mentioned the names of 35 Russian Paralympians.

The Russian Paralympic Committee submitted an appeal to CAS to fight the IPC decision to ban the Russian Paralympians from the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio on August 15.