There could be as few as 40 Russian athletes competing as neutrals at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, according to International Olympic Committee (IOC) vice-president John Coates.

“The issue is how many [Russian athletes] are going to be there too, because they’re not going to be in any team sports because they can’t compete as Russia,” Coates told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.

“Anyone who is prepared out of the Russian military clubs, they’re not going,” added the 73-year-old. “I don’t know, but obviously some athletes might choose not to go if they’re not competing for Russia.”

Coates, who is also a former president of Australia’s Olympic Committee, concluded that “I might [not] be right, but I think that I’ve read that [the Russian contingent] might be as little as 40.”

Under sanctions put in place because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, for which Belarus acted as a staging post, the IOC is allowing only some Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in Paris under tight restrictions.

The inclusion of the neutral athletes remains a contentious issue, with the Ukraine foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, describing December’s decision to allow them as “shameful”. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, said last week she did not want Russian athletes to take part in the 2024 Summer Games.

“I would prefer them not to come,” Hidalgo told Reuters. “It will be very, very difficult to see, even under the neutral flag – because we know how much emphasis Putin puts on Russians – these athletes.”

Neutral athletes will compete only in individual sports this summer without flags, emblems or national anthems. Any athletes who actively support the war in Ukraine, or are contracted to the Russian or Belarusian military, are not eligible to take part.

Moscow, which describes the invasion as a “special military operation”, called the restrictions “illegitimate, unfair and unacceptable”, but Russia’s Olympic chief, Stanislav Pozdnyakov, has confirmed its athletes would not boycott the Games.

Because of doping sanctions that prevented them from competing under the Russian flag, 335 athletes took part in the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games as the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) team, winning 71 medals. Belarus sent 101 athletes, who won seven medals.

The ROC has since been suspended by the IOC for recognising regional Olympic councils in territories annexed from Ukraine, a decision that was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) last month.

Some sports, such as equestrianism, will not allow any athletes from the two countries to compete, while World Athletics has had a blanket ban in place against Russian and Belarusian athletes since early 2022.

Others, such as World Swimming and the International Tennis Federation (ITF), will allow Russians and Belarussians to compete under the IOC restrictions. The Russian tennis star Daniil Medvedev said earlier this month he was looking forward to competing in Paris and would abide by the rules.

The Paris Olympics run from 26 July to 11 August. Of the 4,600 athletes who had qualified at the time of the December decision on neutral athletes, only eight were Russians and three held Belarusian passports. At that time, more than 60 Ukrainian athletes had qualified for the Games.