On Monday (February 28), the IOC recommended sports organisations to disallow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials at international competitions for their part in the conflict in Ukraine, which led to International Federations following suit, including FIFA.

Bach said the organisation had opted against making compromise on the pledge of peace calling the situation "very difficult", adding that the ban was not directly against the Russian Olympic Committee, who are not complicit in the invasion.

"We have left this open...it was very difficult either to set a deadline or to define an event, what could either lead to heavier sanctions or what could lead to a lifting of some of the sanctions," said Bach to reporters, according to Reuters.

"This is why you find in general terms the formula that we are keeping to closely monitor the situation and will adapt depending on the further developments.

"You can only hold those responsible who are responsible for a breach of the Olympic Charter. 

"And not the Russian people, nor the athletes, nor the Russian Olympic Committee is responsible for this."

He added that he had not spoken to the Russian President Vladimir Putin since the invasion, mentioning he had not been on speaking terms with him "for a number of years".

Putin has called the invasion of Ukraine a "special military operation", with interest in the self-declared independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The port city of Kherson was the first in Ukraine to fall to Russian forces yesterday.

Athletes from Belarus were banned alongside those from Russia due to the country's assistance in allowing forces to cross its border to invade Ukraine.

At the Closing Ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Bach called for politicians to follow the example of athletes and "give peace a chance".

On February 24, Ukraine was invaded, four days after the closure of the Games.

"Sometimes you wish you could do more and this was the wish I expressed in the Closing Ceremony...then you see that all the efforts were for nothing, that this inspiration was not was not strong enough and then it’s horrifying," added Bach.

"It's really horrifying.

"Again, we are coming to our limits. 

"We have no police force, we have no military. 

"There we can only offer moral support and can help to shed the light on this situation, but there our influence ends.

"We can argue as we did in other humanitarian cases affecting athletes, by trying to intervene and to again, to shed light, to ask for exceptions or to call for mildness, but this is all we can do, we can only appeal."

Today, the International Paralympic Committee followed the IOC's decision and banned athletes from Russia and Belarus for the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympic Games, scheduled to start tomorrow.