Ukrainian sports minister decries signs IOC may soften restrictions on Russian athletes

MILAN (AP) — Ukraine's sports minister decried actions by the International Olympic Committee that his government says indicate the body may soon ease restrictions against Russian athletes, allowing them to once again represent their country in future Olympic Games.

At the Milan Cortina Olympics, 13 Russians are competing as “Individual Neutral Athletes”, meaning they cannot wear any Russian symbols and won’t hear the Russian national anthem if they win a gold medal. Athletes from Russian ally Belarus face the same limits.

Matvii Bidnyi, Ukraine's minister of youth and sports, told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday in Milan that any change would be “irresponsible” and appear to condone Russia's invasion as the war's fourth anniversary approaches.

“It looks like you want to legitimize this evil,” Bidnyi said, referring to supporters of bringing Russia back into the Games. “We must keep this pressure until this war ends.”

The IOC took a step toward relaxing policy on Russia in December when it advised sports bodies to allow Russian youth athletes to participate with their flag and anthem ahead of the IOC’s own Youth Olympics later this year. Russia has consistently pushed for a full lifting of restrictions.

In response, Russian fencers have been competing this year in junior events under the Russian flag. But the biggest change so far came Friday, when swimming body World Aquatics dropped its restrictions on Russian youth and junior athletes.

Asked Monday whether it is considering further steps to allow Russian participation ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, the IOC referred the AP to a December statement following the Olympic Summit in Switzerland.

The summit's participants “reaffirmed that athletes have a fundamental right to access sport across the world, and to compete free from political interference or pressure from governmental organizations,” the statement said.

While new IOC President Kirsty Coventry has not specifically addressed Russian athletes at these Games, earlier this month she used her keynote speech ahead of the Milan Cortina Games to reiterate a renewed focus on sports, less so on engaging in politics. Coventry’s predecessor Thomas Bach oversaw the system allowing Russian athletes to compete as neutral individuals.

“We are a sports organization,” Coventry said Feb. 3, calling sports the IOC’s core priority. “We understand politics and we know we don’t operate in a vacuum. But our game is sport.”

Sports sanctions are an important negotiating tool for Ukraine, Bidnyi said, as Russia takes pride in its history of athletic prowess and has long used its success in sport for propaganda. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday said the U.S. has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a peace deal.

As the frigid Ukrainian winter drags on, Russian airstrikes continue to hammer the power grid. Ukraine is struggling with blackouts that have kept millions in the dark and without heat amid freezing temperatures. When generators are deployed, Bidnyi said they're not used to power sports venues so athletes can practice.

"You must make a choice before keeping ice arenas or, for example, give electricity to the families in houses," he said.

Russian athletes haven’t competed under their country’s flag at a Winter Olympics since 2014, when Russia hosted a doping-tainted Games in Sochi.

Over years of legal battles, fallout from those drug cases meant Russians had to compete in Pyeongchang in 2018 as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” and in Beijing in 2022 under the team name of just “ROC” — so that it wouldn’t have the words Russia or Olympic — both times without the national anthem.

The World Anti-Doping Agency still lists Russia’s national testing body as “non-compliant” and says it can’t visit Russia for in-person checks on its performance.

Russia denied the state was complicit in doping.

Many sports barred Russian athletes from competing as part of the diplomatic fallout after Russian troops moved into Ukraine four days after the last Winter Olympics in 2022. Ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, the International Olympic Committee gradually opened up paths for athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus to qualify with neutral status.

Fifteen Russians competed as neutral athletes in Paris, winning their only medal in tennis. They were not allowed to parade as a delegation in either Games’ opening ceremony.

Coventry and the IOC have come under increasing pressure to put similar restrictions on athletes from Israel following the war in Gaza.

At present, Russian athletes are ineligible for neutral status from the IOC if under contract with Russian or Belarusian security agencies or the military, or if they have expressed support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have disputed whether some of those Russians competing in Olympic qualifiers truly meet the neutral restrictions.

Most winter sports bodies have allowed Russians to compete in such qualifiers in recent weeks, amid a series of legal defeats for policies banning Russian athletes.

War has taken a heavy toll on Ukrainian sport. Athletes were displaced or called up to fight. Soccer matches are often interrupted by air raid sirens so attendance is capped by bomb shelter capacity. Elite skaters, skiers and biathletes usually train abroad, with attacks and frequent blackouts shuttering local facilities.

Nevertheless, Ukraine has managed to bring 46 athletes to Milan Cortina. They range from Kyrylo Marsak, the country’s lone figure skater in Milan, to six cross-country skiers and 10 biathletes.

They aim to send an important message to Russia and the rest of the world, Bidnyi said.

“We have the opportunity to raise our flag to show that Ukraine is resilient, Ukraine is still in power,” he said. “We have a will to win and we continue to be one of the most successful sport teams in the world because success in sports always was a part of the Ukrainian national brand.”

James Ellingworth and Graham Dunbar in Milan contributed to this report.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Members of a women's ice hockey team train on the frozen Fontanka River in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

Yelyzaveta Sydorko, flag bearer of Ukraine, leads Ukrainian athletes during the Olympic opening ceremony at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Dmytro Pidruchnyi, of Ukraine, skis during a biathlon training session at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Anterselva, Italy, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)

Khrystyna Dmytrenko, of Ukraine, skis during a biathlon training session at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Anterselva, Italy, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Ukrainian Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi discusses the impact of the war in Ukraine on Olympic athletes, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Stefanie Dazio)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military forces boarded a sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the ship from the Caribbean Sea, the Pentagon said Monday.

The Pentagon's statement on social media did not say whether the ship was connected to Venezuela, which faces U.S. sanctions on its oil and relies on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.

However, the Aquila II was one of at least 16 tankers that departed the Venezuelan coast last month after U.S. forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro, said Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com. He said his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document the ship's movements.

A Navy official would not comment on what forces were used in the operation but confirmed that the destroyers USS Pinckney and USS Ralph Johnson, along with the mobile base ship USS Miguel Keith were operating in the Indian Ocean. In videos posted to social media by the Pentagon, uniformed forces can be seen boarding a Navy helicopter that then takes off from a ship that matches the profile of the Miguel Keith.

Video and photos of the tanker shot from inside a helicopter also show a Navy destroyer sailing alongside the ship. It is not clear from the video to which agency the forces conducted the seizure of the vessel belonged.

According to data transmitted from the ship on Monday, it is not currently laden with a cargo of crude oil.

The Aquila II is a Panamanian-flagged tanker under U.S. sanctions related to the shipment of illicit Russian oil. Owned by a company with a listed address in Hong Kong, ship tracking data shows it has spent much of the last year with its radio transponder turned off, a practice known as “running dark” commonly employed by smugglers to hide their location.

U.S. Southern Command, which oversees Latin America, said in an email that it had nothing to add to the Pentagon's post on X. The post said the military “conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction” on the ship.

“The Aquila II was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean,” the Pentagon said. “It ran, and we followed.”

The U.S. did not say it had seized the ship, which the U.S. has done previously with at least seven other sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela.

Since the U.S. ouster of Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid on Jan. 3, the Trump administration has set out to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s oil products. Officials in President Donald Trump’s Republican administration have made it clear they see seizing the tankers as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.

Trump also has been trying to restrict the flow of oil to Cuba, which faces strict economic sanctions by the U.S. and relies heavily on oil shipments from allies like Mexico, Russia and Venezuela.

Since the Venezuela operation, Trump has said no more Venezuelan oil will go to Cuba and that the Cuban government is ready to fall. Trump also recently signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, primarily pressuring Mexico because it has acted as an oil lifeline for Cuba.

FILE - The Pentagon, the headquarters for the U.S. Department of Defense, is seen from the air, Sept. 20, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, FIle)