PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA—It is a spirited and symbolic little ceremony, the formal welcoming of a country’s delegation to the Olympic Village.

Check in, flag up, anthem played. For most countries, the only time their anthem will be heard at the Games.

Some 2,925 athletes from 92 national Olympic committees will get the greet treatment this week, in quick-step eight-bars-and-off segments at the village plaza — Canada’s turn on Wednesday afternoon.

But not Russia.

Their beautiful, evocative anthem is not to be heard at the athletes village or anywhere else during the XXIII Winter Games. Their flag is not to be seen — except if held aloft by spectators. The Guardians of the Games have made sure of that. And those Russian athletes had better not grab a flag from the fans either for a medal lap. That will get them turfed — joining their dope-slimed comrades on the barred list.

“There will be no welcoming ceremony for the Olympic Athletes from Russia,” the venue press manager confirmed for the Star on Monday, using the official term for the team from the pariah nation. “No anthem playing, no flag.”

Well, we’ve known for a while that the Russians would be getting a cold reception in Pyeongchang, with many dismayed that any Russians are here at all. But to begin seeing this punitive execution, in real time, in real places, is also distressing. Because these Russians, arriving at the Games threshold, are purportedly clean, or at least they’ve passed the International Olympic Committee sniff test, which is a higher standard than the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Russians present and accounted for are to be sheathed in homeland anonymity.

“There are some here already,” says the venue manager. “You probably could not identify them. They just have on grey sweaters, nothing that says Russia.”

Actually, the absence of national identifiers make them identifiable among the sportsmen and sportswomen in the international zone of the village. So, too, their living quarters — from among a cluster of high-rise buildings — are notable because no flags hang from the windows and railings.

There is, in fact, a there there, a who’s who, but the IOC is awfully conflicted about it.

The Russians are here as neutrals, an imposed designation. Participation compelled the athletes to sign an “integrity declaration form” or risk having their accreditation withdrawn. That declaration form contains a set of guidelines, including rules which prohibit them from taking a Russian flag, emblem or symbol if offered one by a fan. The OAR Team, as it’s officially known, has been instructed to “refrain from any public form of publicity, activity and communication” associated with the flag, anthem, etc., and most of all the ensign of the suspended Russian Olympic Committee — a ban that extends to social media. Also taboo: “Alternate” victory ceremonies for any Russian athlete who cops a medal — and there will likely be plenty of those because the no-Russia delegation of Russians has (as of last approved count) 169 athletes, so still accounting for one of the largest teams in Pyeongchang.

The Kremlin needs to analyze the International Olympic Committee's ruling to bar Russia and its sports officials from the upcoming Pyeongchang Games. (The Associated Press)

If these Russians rack up the medals — and their tally won’t show on the toteboard, but everyone will know all the same — there will be howls of outrage.

“At the Olympics we will be competing under the white flag, but we are still ‘Athletes from Russia,’ ” says Alina Zagitova, a 15-year-old from the Urals who arrives in Pyeongchang as the Russian, Grand Prix final and European women’s figure skating champion — as quoted by Russian state media. “In our souls, we know.”

It’s an ill-fit, this gerrymandered inclusion — too far a proscription in the opinion of some, not far enough in the opinion of others.

Clearly there have to be consequences for a country that perpetrated massive, systematic drug-testing fraud at the Sochi Olympics, where Russia topped the medals table with 13 gold, 11 silver and nine bronze, followed by Canada and the U.S. But the host nation lost first-place status when it was stripped of a number of medals by the IOC over the alleged doping manipulation of urine samples. Last Thursday, the CAS cleared 28 athletes — out of 39 who’d received lifetime suspensions — thereby reinstating their results and putting Russia back on top. As a result of the CAS decision, Russia now has 11 gold, nine silver and nine bronze. The IOC still has to approve it.

Follow? A huge victory for Russia. But it gets more complicated because on Monday the IOC announced it would refuse to a request from Moscow to allow 13 athletes and two coaches — they were among the 28 whose lifetime bans were overturned — to compete in Pyeongchang.

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IOC president Thomas Bach, who’d earlier described the IOC’s partial Russia ban as a “proportional” response to a never-before-seen attack on the integrity of the Olympic Games, was clearly furious with the CAS ruling. (Keep in mind that doping chicanery involving Russia had also erupted just before the Rio Games two years ago, in that case the IOC leaving Team Russia intact and letting individual sports federations sort it all out.)

On Monday, the IOC thumbed its nose at the CAS, refusing to reverse its ban on the Gang of 15.

In the statement issued, the IOC emphasized that its own review panel had examined each applicant on a case-by-case basis, and the consensus was that it didn’t require the absolute proof of doping violations — direct evidence — which the Swiss-based CAS claimed it didn’t have, ergo the reinstatement. (The CAS has not yet released specific reasons for reinstating 28 athletes while refusing the appeals of another 11.)

In any event, the IOC panel had lingering “suspicions” about the doping violations that exploded after Sochi, courtesy of a whistleblower — the former director of Moscow’s anti-drug lab, which allegedly functioned as a drug-shrouding lab by swapping out urine tests indicating steroid use with thousands of clean samples. The review panel took into account “additional information” data received from the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Honestly, I just don’t know. There is no criminal court in the world that requires “absolute proof’’ of guilt. The standard is proof beyond a reasonable doubt and it certainly appears the IOC has that where these dope felons are concerned. Further, the Olympics are a privilege not a civil right, and the Lords of the Rings are well within their rights to weed out drug cheats. Except, when it comes to integrity, the immensely corrupt IOC hardly has a moral leg to stand on.

We all want to believe in the possibility of clean competition. It is manifestly unfair for non-dopers to compete against the cheats, to lose their shot at glory, especially when the malefactors were aided and abetted by a state-sponsored apparatus of conniving.

Clean athletes can’t get that moment back, as Canadian luger Sam Edney reminded in an emotional statement made at a Monday press conference. He was in the ridiculous position of having been belatedly awarded Sochi bronze and then, as a result of the CAS decision, apparently having it snatched away again.

“I ask you to look at the faces of myself and my seven teammates,” said Edney. “These are the faces of eight clean athletes.

“Six of us are directly impacted negatively by Sochi events. Four of us lost the Olympic moment we all trained relentlessly for, a moment to share in celebration with Canadians across the country.”

Yet I think there is a heavy-handedness in the public lynching of Russian athletes when the intention, surely, should be to hold the state accountable for its alleged systematic deceit and dirty-dealing.

It also strikes me as phony righteousness when some of the Russia-floggers, from among North American commentators, are simultaneously proponents of letting the steroid-era cheats into Cooperstown. Like, hey, they were great anyway — Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, etc. — and the juice wasn’t a defining factor.

But if the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming anyway, then let’s forgo the fig leaf of censure, the public shaming, and call them what they are: Team Russia.

Play the damn anthem.

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