Vladimir Putin orders Russian investigation into Wada claims of state-sponsored doping programme
Vladimir Putin has ordered an investigation into claims of a state-sponsored doping programme in Russian athletics.
The Russian president said those involved in sport in the country should pay "the greatest possible attention" to the issue after the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) revealed its shocking findings on Monday.
Wada recommended that at least five Russian athletes and coaches should be given lifetime bans from the sport and stripped Russia's drug-testing laboratory in Moscow of its accreditation after 1,417 test samples were destroyed before they could be inspected.
Read more: Doping claims – how many 2012 medals could be implicated?
Ahead of a meeting with Russian sport ministers in Sochi, Putin said: "Doping needs to be fought. As far as the latest events connected to our athletics federation, I'm asking the minister of sport and all our colleagues who are linked in one way or another with sport to pay this issue the greatest possible attention. That's first.
"Secondly, it is essential that we conduct our own internal investigation and – I want to underline – provide the most open professional co-operation with international anti-doping structures. We in Russia should do everything to get rid of this problem.
"Of course if we come tot he conclusion that someone should answer for something that violates the existing rules in the anti-doping sphere, responsibility should be personified.
"Responsibility should always be personal, and it's very clear that athletes who are far from doping, who never got close to this, don't engage in this, should not answer for those who violate."
Yesterday, Russia's under-fire sports minister Vitaly Mutko responded to criticism by arguing that British anti-doping efforts were "even worse than ours".
He said: "It was the British system of doping control that operated there [2012 Olympics]. Each medal winner was tested for doping and received their medal only after having tested negative. And if today you are accusing our athletes, then I am sorry, your system has zero value and is even worse than ours.”
London 2012 anti-doping chief Jonathan Harris defended testing at the Games, which he said was “so awesome that athletes wouldn’t have turned up doped”.
He added: “If these individuals had been rigorously tested in advance then these people would have not have attended because they would have been under doping sanctions.”