Valerii Sushkevych, President of the National Paralympic Committee of Ukraine, has reported that the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) banned Ukrainian athletes from wearing a kit featuring a map of Ukraine at the 2026 Winter Paralympics.
It wasn’t clear if that is just a blanket rule for all countries or not. It would have been funny if they made up a kit where it was a more accurate map of Ukraine, but only came together with 3 or 4 athletes standing together in the right order.
Considering they allow russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under their national flags, I see no reason why they should forbid anyone from expressing their national identity. If the map of Ukraine is somehow a point of contention for some other team, maybe that team should not compete
The problem is that the map features a contested border.
It would be like Pakistan or India showing up wearing a map of their countries which show they annexed all of Jammu & Kashmir. It isn’t just an expression of national identity at that point.
It wasn’t clear if that is just a blanket rule for all countries or not. It would have been funny if they made up a kit where it was a more accurate map of Ukraine, but only came together with 3 or 4 athletes standing together in the right order.
Considering they allow russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under their national flags, I see no reason why they should forbid anyone from expressing their national identity. If the map of Ukraine is somehow a point of contention for some other team, maybe that team should not compete
The problem is that the map features a contested border.
It would be like Pakistan or India showing up wearing a map of their countries which show they annexed all of Jammu & Kashmir. It isn’t just an expression of national identity at that point.
Contested? I believe the world overwhelmingly recognizes the real borders of Ukraine as depicted on that map.
The real controversial move would be to show up with a 1919 map of Ukraine: