With the rhetorical temperature rising fast, it is worth underlining that we are still 18 months away from the moment when the Olympic Cauldron is lit in the French capital.

If the war ignited by Russia’s February 2022 invasion is still in full grisly swing then, well we may all be wrestling with far more pressing concerns than who is, and is not, taking part in the 100 metres heats or even the mixed team skeet.

Yet the scenario outlined in my first sentence is one highly plausible potential outcome of last week’s IOC statement reporting widespread support in the Movement for further exploring a “pathway” for participation by athletes with Russian or Belarusian passports.

The matter is flaring now because any Olympics must be preceded, naturally enough, by Olympic qualification.

If Russian athletes are barred from qualifying events, then they will not be parading in Paris no matter what happens in the meantime on the battlefield or in wider geopolitical affairs.

This presents the IOC with a headache since it could otherwise wait a few more months for the war to blow itself out, but also because, as additionally spelt out in last week’s statement, each International Sports Federation (IF) is “the sole authority for its international competitions”.

In practice, the IOC’s financial and political muscle is such that many, probably most, Summer Olympic IFs can be expected to strive mightily to do what the IOC wants.

But it is going to be very hard - and probably very messy - to make a consistent and uniform approach stick.

Ultimately - and again irrespective of what happens in the war (unless it can be brought somehow to a swift end) - Russian athletes’ prospects of appearing in Paris may hinge as much as anything on what sport they happen to practice.

Comments by Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) Acting President Randhir Singh fleshing out how Russians might be offered an avenue to Paris 2024 via OCA competitions such as the Asian Games tended to underline this, indicating that Russians might well be able to compete in some sports but not others.

It may be remembered that I was far more reticent than most of my peers about blanket bans being imposed on Russian athletes as a consequence of the Russian doping crisis.

I would have no such qualms over their exclusion as a consequence of this appalling war.

Doping does not lead to wholesale slaughter of innocents and, as the former IOC doyen Richard Pound put it in our recent interview with him, “At a certain point, there is a shared national responsibility for national conduct”.

If Russia thinks Olympic participation is so important, then the route should be clear: withdraw your fighters, stop the bombardment and pursue your grievances by peaceful means.

This is the message that the IOC should be communicating to the Kremlin – and who knows, perhaps in private it is.

Last week’s IOC statement, giving its summary of recent consultations with Olympic Movement representatives, emphasised that any Russians taking part in competitions would do so as so-called “neutral athletes” and that those “actively supporting” the war in Ukraine would continue to be excluded.

This too is worthy of comment.

One could imagine that most observers - perhaps even Ukrainians - would take a more sympathetic view towards the participation in international sport of Russian athletes who “actively”, i.e. verbally, opposed the war.

Yet this became almost unthinkable with passage of a law last year exposing those disseminating what authorities deem to be fake news about the conflict to prison sentences of up to 15 years.

That is another message which could usefully be passed to Moscow by the IOC and indeed by French authorities who will be hosting the Games and will not want to see them ruined: if you wish to strengthen the case for Russian athletes’ participation, you need to scrap this law.

To be blunt, the only good scenario for the IOC, as for the long-suffering Ukrainian people and the rest of us, is a swift end to the war.

A Ukraine boycott would be a public relations disaster for the IOC, at least in the wealthy, liberal West, where most of the Movement’s money comes from.

So would a months’-long, IF-by-IF verbal war of attrition to determine whether and how Russians would be allowed at Olympic qualifying events.

Even if Ukrainian and Russian athletes could somehow be induced to take part in the same competitions, you would be running the risk, if tensions were still high, of a repeat of the notorious 1956 Olympic water polo clash between Hungary and the Soviet Union.

Played out in the aftermath of the brutal Soviet repression of the Hungarian uprising, this has gone down in history as the "Blood in the Water" match.

Those Melbourne Games also offer a prior example of a country boycotting the Olympics after it was invaded.

The country was Egypt and the invasion was what we refer to as the Suez Crisis - a historic setback for British foreign policy which largely precipitated the resignation of Anthony Eden, the British Prime Minister.