The Russian government has again denied that the Russian State was behind the systemic doping outlined in the Reports produced by Richard McLaren for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). “We discussed everything, including McLaren’s Report”, said Russian Minister of Sport, Pavel Kolobkov in a statement published by the Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF) after a meeting yesterday with an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Working Group. “We have repeatedly said that Russia had problems with doping, as well as other countries. But there was never a State support system for doping, to achieve our results objectives in any illegal way. This was one of the key themes of our discussions.” 

One of the key conditions of WADA’s Roadmap to Compliance is that the Russian Ministry of Sport, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) and national Olympic committee (ROC) ‘publically [sic.] accept the reported outcomes of the McLaren Investigation’. Earlier this week, Kolobkov said that there was “no evidence” in McLaren’s Reports of State involvement in doping, and that a legal challenge to the continued suspension of RUSADA is a possibility.

Although WADA does not require Russia to recognise that doping within the country was State directed, recognition of McLaren’s Reports are politically problematic because they outline the involvement of institutions controlled by the State in organising doping. The Reports also implicate Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko, who was promoted from Minister of Sport in October 2016, after McLaren published his first IP Report.

Richard McLaren changed his definition from ‘State directed’ doping in his first Independent Person (IP) Report to ‘institutionalised’ doping in his second IP Report. He has argued that this was done because Russia argued that ‘State directed’ indicated the involvement of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian political leadership, and such a change was necessary in order to get Russia to cooperate. This change has allowed Russia to make claims – such as Kolobkov’s – that he concluded the Russian State was not involved. However despite this, McLaren doesn’t regret making such a change.

“I needed certain information at the time”, he told The Sports Integrity Initiative at Play The Game 2017. “I met with Russian officials, I got the cooperation I was looking for. I wanted to demonstrate clearly to them that I was listening to what they had to say and making changes where I thought that I should. So I don’t regret changing the discussion.

“Many people would take the definition of State sponsored just as the fact that the Minster of Sport is involved, which he clearly was. There are other conflicting definitions of State sponsored, but if you use the Russian definition, or version, then it’s not State sponsored, but it is certainly institutional.”

McLaren said that the involvement of the Russian federal police (FSB) suggested that there were a lot of “moving parts” within the institutional doping system operating in Russia. “What is a federal police service doing involved in any of this?” he asked. “It is not a police function. As I was saying to somebody, who raised a criminal question, this is a contractual matter. Athletes, federations, and national governing bodies agree by contract not to do these things. It’s not State sponsored in that sense. It’s not a criminal problem.”

McLaren argued that it was Vitaly Mutko who appointed Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov as Director of the Moscow Laboratory in 2012. He also points out that Rodchenkov was also an FSB agent. “Don’t forget that throughout that period – before and after – he was a sworn FSB officer, so he was reporting to an FSB operative throughout his entire period as a lab Director”, said McLaren. “Blaming everything on him is just not the facts. Mutko himself appointed the man. If he had these suspicions and problems with him, then he shouldn’t have done that in the first place. That was in 2012, long before these problems surfaced.”

The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) has also argued that the Samuel Schmid’s Report for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) concluded that there was no evidence that the State was involved in doping. “Schmid’s report directly says that such a system did not exist… There’s a contradiction here that needs to be resolved through negotiations with the WADA somehow, because they insist on recognising something that did not happen,” said ROC President Alexander Zhukov, reports Sputnik News.

As outlined above, this isn’t strictly accurate. In his reports for WADA, McLaren alleges that institutions controlled by the Russian State were involved in institutionalised doping. Rather than refuting this suggestion, as Zhukov claims, the Schmid Report supports this conclusion.

‘The Russian officials admitted wrongdoing by individuals within Russian institutions but never “State doping support system”’, it reads. ‘The IOC DC has not found any documented, independent and impartial evidence confirming the support or the knowledge of this system by the highest State authority […] On many occasions, reference was made on the involvement at the Minister of Sport’s level, but no indication, independent or impartial evidence appeared to corroborate any involvement or knowledge at a higher level of the State.’

At its Symposium yesterday, WADA President Sir Craig Reedie outlined that progress on RUSADA’s reinstatement had stalled. As outlined by The Sports Integrity Initiative, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (SKR) is pursuing charges against Dr. Rodchenkov and Tim Sobolevsky of the Moscow Laboratory for obstructing its own investigation into doping within Russia, launched in June 2016.

No deadline has been set for the conditions which WADA requires Russia to meet before it can declare RUSADA as compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code. As of August last year, 12 conditions remained outstanding.

Kolobkov’s statement indicates that acceptance of the conclusions of Richard McLaren’s IP Reports is likely to remain a significant sticking point. And until RUSADA is reinstated, international federations can suspend Russia from competing in their events for not being compliant with the Code. At present, RusAF and the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) are suspended from competing in events sanctioned by the IAAF and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). Those suspensions remain in place.