README Markdown Images - Prevent Link

I’m adding badges to my READMEs. Product owner has asked that the images no be links to image files. Currently the behavior is that if you left-click on the image, it opens the image file in the browser. The goal is for it to not be a clickable link.
I understand GitLab is using CommonMark. I looked through the CommonMark documentation provided from the GitLab Flavored Markdown documentation, and I wasn’t able to find anything of this sort.
Is it possible to have images in READMEs that aren’t links to the image files?

This may feel non-intuitive, but you can try wrapping them in entirely empty <a> tags (which is still valid HTML):

<a>![badge-alt-text](https://example.com/image.png)</a>

This did the trick! Thanks!