Lifting the ban on Russian competitors was always going to blow up in someone’s face. That someone now appears to be FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, who finds himself facing a formal ethics complaint from Ukraine just as the paddock was starting to forget the whole saga ever happened.
The Ukrainian Automobile Federation has gone straight to the FIA’s ethics committee, demanding an urgent investigation into its Russian counterpart, the RAF. The accusation is about as serious as these things get: that the Russian federation has been running offices in Crimea, Sevastopol, and the occupied Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, territory the United Nations still recognises as sovereign Ukrainian soil.
A Ban Lifted, a Can of Worms Opened
The ban on Russian and Belarusian competitors had been in place since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, a rare moment where motorsport’s governing bodies actually took a stand rather than hiding behind neutrality. That changed when the FIA world council voted to lift it, a decision that sources told BBC Sport was proposed by Ben Sulayem himself. Funny how that keeps happening.
The FIA, predictably, followed the International Olympic Committee’s lead on this one, as if outsourcing your moral compass to another organisation makes the decision any less awkward. Now Ukraine wants the FIA to actually enforce its own rulebook, which states plainly that only one automobile club per country is allowed to operate. The FAU’s argument is simple: if the RAF is running offices on Ukrainian territory, it is breaching FIA statutes and the international sporting code in the process.
Feldman’s Blunt Message
FAU president Oleksandr Feldman did not exactly mince his words when he addressed the situation.
“This is a clear breach of the FIA statutes by the Russian Automobile Federation, which, as an FIA member organisation, is bound to comply with them. We urge the FIA president to take urgent action to have these offices closed, and for the Russian automobile federation to be sanctioned for its actions.” – Oleksandr Feldman
The Ukrainian club wants the ethics committee to formally rule the RAF in breach and force the closure of those offices immediately. They have also pointed out, with the subtlety of a brick, that RAF head Boris Rotenberg is under international sanctions from the US, UK, EU and other allied nations over Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Not exactly the profile of a man you’d want representing a supposedly neutral sporting body.
Judge, Jury and Conveniently in Charge
Here is where it gets properly uncomfortable for the FIA. Following changes to its statutes last year, the ethics committee that will decide this complaint sits under the control of Ben Sulayem and his ally, senate president Carmelo Sanz de Barros. So the man whose own proposal reportedly opened the door to this mess is now overseeing the body that judges whether it was handled properly. One does not need to be a cynic, though it helps, to see how that might look from Kyiv.
The FIA has been approached for comment and, as of now, has said nothing. Silence has become something of a house style for the governing body whenever a story threatens to embarrass the top of the organisation, and this one has all the ingredients: sanctioned officials, occupied territory, and a president whose fingerprints are all over the original decision.
Bigger Than a Paddock Squabble
This complaint lands at an awkward moment for an organisation that has spent the past year fending off questions about transparency, from unexplained engine ranking disputes to opaque governance changes. Regular readers will recall the mess around Red Bull’s engine ranking claims and the FIA’s reluctance to clarify basic facts, and this fits the same pattern: decisions made behind closed doors, then defended with silence rather than substance.
It also raises an obvious question that Ben Sulayem’s supporters would rather not answer. If the FIA genuinely wants to be seen as a serious, rules-based governing body rather than a vehicle for one man’s preferences, why does every controversial call seem to trace back to him, and why does every body meant to hold him accountable answer to him too?
Don’t Hold Your Breath
Ukraine wants urgent action. Given the FIA’s recent form on urgency, timelines and basic accountability, that request should probably come with a very long wait attached. An ethics committee investigating the very decision its own president is alleged to have championed sounds less like justice and more like theatre, and theatre, unfortunately, is something this FIA does rather well.
