•Putin suggests ban is due to politics
•Kremlin declines to say who should be punished
The Kremlin is blaming political chicanery, not its own sports officials, after doctored laboratory data resulted in a ban that means Russia will appear on the global sports stage without its flag or anthem for the next four years.
In the latest twist to the country’s continuing doping scandal, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Monday handed Russia a four-year ban from top international sporting events, including the next summer and winter Olympics and the 2022 soccer World Cup.
The members of WADA’s executive committee unanimously backed such a ban after finding Moscow guilty of supplying doctored doping-related laboratory data.
Russia’s response, from President Vladimir Putin downwards, has been defiant and lacking in contrition. Putin, speaking in Paris earlier on Tuesday, criticised the principle of collective punishment used to sanction Russia.
“I think there is every grounds to suppose that the basis for such decisions is not a care about the purity of international sport, but political considerations which have nothing to do with the interest of sport or the Olympic movement,” Putin said.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin ally, said on Monday he recognised that there were still problems to be resolved, but again he said he saw other forces at work. The move to punish Moscow looked like “anti-Russian hysteria,” he said.
When asked on Tuesday whether anyone in Russia should be punished over the doping scandal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not name any names.
“Right now our main task is to express our disagreement,” Peskov said. “The main thing is not to let collective responsibility violate the interests of our athletes. Everything else is secondary.”