The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, slated to start in less than two hundred days, will be set against a backdrop of controversy and war. Two invasions — one carried out by Russia against Ukraine and the other by Israel against Palestinians — have thrown a spotlight on the double standards of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Switzerland-based nonprofit that oversees the Games.

Last fall, the IOC announced it would ban the Russian Olympic Committee from attending the Paris Games. However, it stopped short of blocking the participation of Russian athletes — something the IOC has done in the past, in cases like that of apartheid South Africa. Some Russian athletes would be able to participate in Paris, it said, but as neutrals without the Russian flag or national anthem.

The IOC based its decision on two factors: Russia’s obliteration of the Olympic Truce — a nonbinding United Nations resolution nudging countries to avoid war during the Games — and its abrogation of the Olympic Charter when it violated the territorial integrity of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine by taking over “regional sports organizations which are under the authority of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine.”