While the image of the war in Ukraine is one of muddy battlefields and bombed cities, the conflict recently reached a more refined setting: a fencing hall at the Palazzo dei Congressi in Milan, where two young women met, dressed in white. Their match at the World Fencing Championships became a diplomatic incident when the Ukrainian winner refused to shake hands with her Russian opponent. On July 27, 364 days before the opening of the 2024 Olympic Games, geopolitics collided with the planning of Paris's big event.

Competing in the first round of the individual saber event that morning were Ukraine's Olga Kharlan, 32, and Russia's Anna Smirnova, 23. This confrontation was the result of an unlikely draw, coupled with a last-minute shift in Ukrainian policy. The day before, the country's sports minister, Vadym Guttsait, amended a decree which had previously prohibited his country's athletes from competing against Russians and Belarusians, regardless of whether they were competing under a neutral banner, as was the case with Smirnova. The change effectively allows Ukrainians to participate fully in the selection process for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

When Kharlan stepped out in Milan on the morning of July 27, she was the first athlete from her country to benefit from the new policy released by the sports minister, who is also president of the Ukrainian National Olympic Committee, and a former saber fencer who won a gold medal for the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. Since the start of the war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, clashes between players from the warring nations had previously occurred; but in tennis, a discipline where athletes compete as individuals, separate from any national delegation.

Brandishing their sabers, strapped in their immaculate white plastrons, the fencers set foot on the pale red track flooded with artificial light. Kharlan's mask was painted with the blue and yellow of Ukraine. On the back of Smirnova's jacket were three letters: AIN, standing for athlète individuelle neutre (individual neutral athlete). With the exception of some 20 members of the Ukrainian delegation cheering on Kharlan with cries of "Slava Ukraini" ("Glory to Ukraine"), the spectators, like the Olympic committee, held their breath.

Within the 14-meter-long and two-meter-wide corridor on which fencing matches take place, the athletes have no alternative but to move back and forth, echoing the position from which global sports authorities, heads of state, and ministers from various countries have been struggling to make headway for months over one crucial question: Can Russian and Ukrainian athletes take part in the same competitions – and therefore sometimes compete against each other – without sporting arenas becoming theaters of war? And above all, how can their coexistence be managed during the 2024 Paris Olympics, which is less than a year away?

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