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VNL 2027: What Russia's Return Changes 🌍
The FIVB let Russia back in on 4 August. The field goes to 19 a side, the world ranking points come back frozen, and the flag has not been decided.
The FIVB confirmed on 4 August that Russian national teams return to the Volleyball Nations League in 2027, men and women both, ending a ban that had run since February 2022.
The field expands from 18 teams to 19 in each gender, and only for 2027.
That extra place exists so Russia's return does not push out Finland in the men's competition or Slovenia in the women's, both of which qualified on merit.
This is not neutral-athlete status, and it did not come out of a court.
The FIVB acted a month after the IOC found its own conditions on Russian athletes no longer applicable, and it restored Russia's world ranking points at the same time. Flag, anthem and colours are left to the FIVB and the CEV to settle.
The one hard condition is an anti-doping testing plan run through the International Testing Agency. Russia's men have separately chosen not to enter the 2027 Men's World Cup, and the FIVB's 4 August statement said the women's entry was still being explored.
The Men Come Back Ranked Third on Frozen Points
Russia won the VNL in 2018 and 2019, beating the United States 3-1 (25-23, 20-25, 25-21, 25-20) in the Chicago final on 14 July 2019.
Their last VNL was 2021 rather than 2019, and the defending champions went out of it in the preliminary round. An earlier version of this article had 2019 as their last appearance, and that was wrong.
With the points restored, Russia's men re-entered the FIVB world ranking third on 352.10, behind Poland and Italy and ahead of the United States. The women re-entered ninth.
Those points are frozen from before February 2022. Russia sits third in the world on results nobody has been able to test for four and a half years, and that is the most interesting number in the whole announcement.
A frozen ranking is a claim about 2021 printed as a fact about 2027.
Every other side in that top five has spent four and a half years being beaten by somebody, and the ranking has no way of saying whether Russia would have been. The first men's camp after the decision called up fourteen players and every one of them plays for a Russian domestic club, according to the Bulgarian outlet Volleyweek. The coach, Konstantin Bryanski, said the list was far from complete.
The Women Are Already Playing
Russia's women were never away as long. They played VNL 2021, finished eighth on an 8-7 record, and played Serbia in Belgrade on 5 and 7 August.
Their squad is drawn the other way from the men's, largely out of Fenerbahce, VakifBank, Galatasaray and Novara rather than the domestic league.
Russia's women took Olympic silver at Sydney in 2000 and again at Athens in 2004, and have not stood on an Olympic podium since.
The 2027 field is now settled at 19 a side. What flies over the Russian bench when they walk out has not been decided by anybody.
