The decision landed in the middle of Formula 1’s summer shutdown. With the championship dark, the World Motor Sport Council voted last week to lift the FIA Russia ban — the prohibition on Russian and Belarusian competitors that had stood since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Ukraine’s own motorsport federation, by its own account, did not see it coming.
On Tuesday the BBC’s Andrew Benson reported that the Ukrainian government has written to the governing body asking it to think again. The request came from ministerial level: a statement by the head of Ukraine’s automobile federation, seen by BBC Sport, said the country’s Minister of Youth and Sports had put it to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, and to the World Motor Sport Council, in writing.
What the FIA Russia ban decision actually changed
The vote changes who may compete, not where the FIA will sanction events. “The FIA has updated the requirements for Russian and Belarusian drivers, national teams, competitors and officials following a vote by the World Motor Sport Council,” the governing body said in a statement. It added that it “maintains its ban on organising events and competitions in Russia and Belarus” and that it “continues to monitor the situation closely in Ukraine”, with the right to revisit the decision expressly reserved.
The FIA framed the change as alignment rather than initiative, pointing to the International Olympic Committee’s announcement of 7 July and “similar updates issued by other international sporting federations”. BBC Sport has been told by multiple sources that the council took the decision at Ben Sulayem’s behest.
Ukraine’s objection: ‘a counterproductive effect’
“The minister sent a letter to the president of the FIA and the FIA World Motor Sport Council requesting that the decision concerning the aforementioned lifting of sanctions be reconsidered,” the Ukrainian federation’s statement said. The move, it added, had “come as a complete surprise”.
Its case is not that the FIA has broken step with the wider sporting world; it concedes the opposite. “Although this decision is consistent with the latest decisions of the International Olympic Committee, in the global motorsport system it may, in practice, have a counterproductive effect, first and foremost in the context of ensuring the integrity of competitions,” the statement said.
The federation then set out the human cost. “As a result of the full-scale aggression by the Russian Federation with the assistance of the Republic of Belarus, Ukrainian motorsport has suffered significant losses, with a large number of our motorsport competitors having been killed during this war, and that such circumstances simply cannot be disregarded when considering decisions of this nature.”
Where this goes next
Procedurally, Ukraine is asking the World Motor Sport Council to revisit its own vote — the same body that put the WRC27 regulations and a raft of F1 rule changes on the fast track in Macau. The BBC’s report carries no FIA response to the request.
Formula 1 resumes at Zandvoort for the Dutch Grand Prix on 21–23 August — the first grand prix weekend since the vote, and the first chance for the paddock to put the question to the FIA in person. The ban on staging events in Russia and Belarus is untouched. What the vote changes is who the governing body will license to compete, and that is the question Ukraine has now asked it, in writing, to think through again.
