CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Ukrainian athletes talked about an “unpleasant” Paralympics in Milan Cortina because of the return of the Russian flag and anthem.
The flag flew at the Paralympics for the first time since the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, and the anthem was played for the first time at a major global sporting event since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Ukraine boycotted the opening ceremony last week and was set to boycott the closing ceremony on Sunday as well.
Athletes from both countries have been expressing how proud they are of representing their nations during the ongoing war.
On Saturday, Ukraine and Russian teams competed against each other in a Para cross-country mixed relay race, with Ukraine earning a silver medal and Russia finishing in sixth place.
“As you know, the relay is about the unity of the team, and that was painful and unpleasant,” Ukrainian skier Iryna Bui told The Associated Press through a translator in a telephone interview. “So we are happy that today we were on the podium and that we are proving our strength.”
Bui did not compete in that relay but won a silver medal in the women's Para biathlon sprint pursuit standing on Friday. She will also compete in the 20-kilometer interval start on Sunday, the final day of the Milan Cortina Games.
She said it was “shocking” and “awful” to see the Russian flag and anthem at the Games.
“It is horrible indeed to see this, this flag that is soaked in blood of Ukrainians, and they are proud of it," she said. "And I ask myself what is happening in this world now.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago ignited Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II, causing suffering for civilians and harrowing ordeals for soldiers while rewriting the post-Cold War security order. The fighting has entered its fifth year, with the number of casualties — people killed, wounded of missing — estimated in the millions combining both sides.
A push for peace has not progressed amid the difficulty of ending reconciling key differences such as the future of Russian-occupied Ukrainian land and postwar security for Ukraine.
“We constantly read the news, and we stay in touch with our families and worry about Ukraine,” Bui said. "We have been living under stress for four years and as athletes, we understand that we represent our country on the international stage, and now it is very important to help Ukraine with our results and our victories.
“Our goal is to fight in every race and the team is highly motivated,” she said. “We want to bring Ukrainians victories and give them something positive in their life.”
Russian athletes are back competing under their own flag in the Winter Paralympics after years of having to do so as neutral athletes because of the country’s doping violations and military conflicts.
The return of the Russian flag and anthem has signaled a possible full-fledged return to the Olympic circles ahead of the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
The International Paralympic Committee gave wildcard entries to Russian athletes, a decision that upset Ukraine and a few other nations that boycotted the opening ceremony last week. Athletes from Russia’s close ally Belarus also were allowed to compete under wildcard entries.
“There is still a war in Ukraine," Hryhorii Vovchynskii, captain of the skiing and biathlon team, told the AP. "I think a country who invades Ukraine and start a war with Ukraine can’t be competing with its athletes.”
Vovchynskii, who is Bui's wife and won a silver medal in Para biathlon at Milan Cortina, said he doesn't pay attention to the Russians' presence.
“It felt like they were not there, they didn't exist,” he said through a translator.
Vovchynskii said Ukrainians were receiving "a lot of support" from athletes from other countries at Milan Cortina.
A pair of German athletes appeared to stage a protest in the podium ceremony when Russia won a gold this week.
Ukraine’s Paralympic committee a few days ago accused local organizers and the International Paralympic Committee of subjecting Ukrainian athletes and coaches to “systematic pressure” at the Games. Organizers defended their actions.
Ahead of the final day of Milan Cortina on Sunday, Russia was fifth in the medals table with five golds, while Ukraine was seventh with three golds.
Some of the Russian athletes tried to avoid talking too much about politics but didn't hide their pride about competing under their own flag and hearing their national anthem on the podium.
Para alpine skier Varvara Voronchikhina said it was “really special” to see the Russian flag fly at the Paralympics again.
Para snowboarder Filipp Shebbo said it was “perfect” for Russians.
“A good moment for Russia, for the athletes," he said. "Hopefully this will continue. We had been waiting for this for a long time.”
AP Winter Paralympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paralympic-games
Varvara Voronchikhina, of Russia, poses on the podium after winning the gold medal in the alpine skiing women's giant slalom standing at the 2026 Winter Paralympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Saturday, March 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A volunteer holds the Ukrainian flag to take part in the opening ceremony at the 2026 Winter Paralympics, in Verona, Italy, Friday, March 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
WASHINGTON (AP) — When acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on a nearly $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate President Donald Trump's allies for alleged political prosecution, he may have pleased his boss.
But the eyebrow-raising move — the latest in his push to prove his loyalty to Trump — has agitated the same Republican lawmakers if he is nominated for the permanent job.
Blanche insists he’s not auditioning for the job of attorney general. But a succession of splashy steps the Justice Department has taken under his watch since he took the position on an acting basis last month, including an indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, has left no doubt about the impression he’s hoping to make on the president who appointed him.
The fund in particular has put Blanche at the center of a Republican firestorm at a time when he aims to establish himself as the perfect person for the job for the remainder of Trump’s term. And it sharpened concerns from Democrats and other Blanche critics that he has not shed his mantle as the president’s personal attorney.
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — Take your pick,” Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former majority leader, said in a statement.
A former federal prosecutor in New York, Blanche came to public prominence for his lead role on Trump's defense team, including during the Republican's hush money trial in New York. That perch afforded him, he has said, a firsthand look at what he contends was the weaponization of the criminal justice system against Trump.
He was brought into the Justice Department as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 job, then was elevated last month after Trump ousted Pam Bondi.
Now he finds himself the latest Trump-appointed attorney general to simultaneously confront expectations from subordinates to uphold institutional norms and demands from the president to do his bidding.
Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was forced out after the 2018 midterms after infuriating the president over his recusal from an investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign. Another, William Barr, resigned after their relationship fizzled over Barr's refusal to back Trump's baseless claims of massive election fraud. Bondi was removed after struggling to bring successful prosecutions against Trump's political opponents.
Two weeks after becoming acting attorney general, Blanche announced the appointment of Joseph diGenova, an 81-year-old former Justice Department prosecutor from the Reagan administration, to a special position inside the department. He'll oversee a Florida-based investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired over the last decade to undermine Trump.
“At some point, at the right time, that will be made public and the American people will see exactly what happened to this administration and President Trump over the past decade," Blanche told Fox News.
Prior government reviews of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, a centerpiece of the current conspiracy investigation, have failed to produce criminal charges against senior officials or evidence of criminal conduct by them. It's not clear what, if any, new information the continuing investigation has developed.
The Justice Department also last month obtained an indictment charging Comey, a Trump foe whose prosecution the president has long called for, with threatening Trump through a social media photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47" — a case legal experts say will be challenging for prosecutors. Comey has said he wouldn't be surprised if the Justice Department pursues additional indictments.
In other moves, Blanche announced an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that has been the target of conservative outrage, with misleading donors about its activities, and has publicly defended a Justice Department crackdown on leaks to the news media, including subpoenas to reporters.
Arguably the most audacious demonstration of loyalty to Trump came this week when the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people who feel they've been unjustly investigated and prosecuted, coupled with a guarantee of immunity from tax audits for Trump and his eldest sons.
As Republican concerns grew, Blanche held a tense meeting with GOP lawmakers Thursday. Shortly afterward, Senate Republicans abruptly left Washington without voting on a roughly $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies.
Blanche, who defended the fund at a congressional hearing this week, has said anyone who believes they've been persecuted can apply for compensation regardless of political affiliation. But the fund has been widely understood as a boon to Trump allies investigated during the Biden administration.
“It’s pretty clear that he’s not the attorney general for the United States as much as he's the attorney general for President Trump,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor and senior Justice Department official in the 1980s. He said Blanche would get an A+ if report cards were issued for fealty to Trump.
David Laufman, a former chief of staff to the deputy attorney general in President George W. Bush's administration, said that rather than protecting the Justice Department's independence, Blanche has been a “willing and ardent accomplice for carrying out any partisan or corrupt scheme the White House may devise.”
Blanche’s supporters dismiss the suggestion he is trying to curry favor with Trump to secure the permanent job.
“What he is doing is he is seeking justice based on facts and the law,” said Jay Town, who served as a U.S. attorney in Alabama during the first Trump administration. “And I don’t think that will ever change about him, whether he is the attorney general going forward or doesn’t spend another day in the administration. He is an honorable man and anybody that knows him knows that to be true.”
Blanche also says he is not angling to keep his job or feeling pressure to placate Trump.
He has told reporters he would be honored to be nominated but, "if he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’ I don’t have any goals or aspirations beyond that.”
In recent days, he's functioned as the fund's public face and most visible defender, a role consistent with his comfort in the spotlight. He sometimes holds multiple press conferences a week and grants interviews to a variety of news outlets, a contrast to Bondi, who largely stuck to Fox News appearances.
His defenders say his experience as a federal prosecutor has made him a more sophisticated communicator for the department than Bondi, but his statements have at times invited backlash, including his refusal to rule out that violent Jan. 6 rioters could be eligible for payouts.
Though Blanche will appoint the five commissioners tasked with processing claims, his precise role in the fund’s implementation is unclear. He told CNN it was developed through negotiations with Trump’s private lawyers, not him.
For some Democrats, that's a difference without a distinction.
“Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the president's personal attorney," Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told Blanche during a combative exchange in the Senate hearing, "and that's the whole problem."
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
