Russia is ready for another visit from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory, but remains in negotiations with WADA on the specific equipment it will use to extract the data it requires from the Laboratory. “All that is necessary for them has been granted in accordance with our requirements and goals”, Kolobkov told state news agency TASS, in an interview published on the Russian Athletics Federation’s (RusAF) internet site on 24 December. “Now we are waiting for their response”.

However on 26 December, Kolobkov clarified that negotiations with WADA are continuing. “Russia is ready to provide a copy fo the database in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation”, he told Russia24 in an interview published on the RusAF internet site. “It remains for us to agree on some of the technical details, including the use of specific equipment. When the experts came, they showed us all of the equipment, offered to copy the database and even take it. In fact, this unique situation did not exist before – the investigative committee took unprecedented measures. So now we interact with WADA and I am sure that we will find common ground and adopt solutions that meet the Russian legislative requirements and satisfy WADA, as that is in all of our interests.”

Under the terms of 20 December decision to conditionally reinstate the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), Russia now has four days to allow WADA to complete its mission. On 22 December, WADA announced that its five person team had left Russia, after being told that the equipment it was using needed to be certified under Russian legislation.

WADA’s position is that certification of the equipment is a new issue. ‘This issue had not been raised during an initial meeting on 28 November in Moscow, after which WADA sent its expert team back to Moscow to retrieve the data’, claimed a WADA statement. Kolobkov’s position, outlined above, appears to be that the five person WADA investigative committee went beyond the remit agreed at that meeting.

However, earlier this month, WADA declined to answer questions from The Sports Integrity Initiative on ‘outstanding points’ that needed clarification after the 28 November meeting. ‘A full technical mission has been provisionally planned but this is subject to a number of outstanding points that need to be clarified in the coming days’, read a WADA statement. ‘We have communicated the exact situation in this regard to the Russian authorities’, wrote a WADA spokesperson in an email. ‘They are aware of our position and hopefully will respond very shortly’.

Dr. Grigory Rodhenkov was the former Director of the Moscow Laboratory who supplied WADA with a copy of the Moscow LIMS in November 2017. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (SKR or Sledcom) has claimed that WADA’s copy of the LIMS database may be unreliable, arguing that it confiscated the authentic version as part of criminal charges against Dr. Rodchenkov and his former assistant, Tim Sobolevsky. The SKR has refused WADA access to the Laboratory, its underlying data or its Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) since June 2016, when it launched a criminal investigation into the former Director of the Laboratory, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov. 

“Craig Reedie is Nero, playing fiddle while Russia burns clean sport to the ground”, read a emailed statement from Jim Walden, Dr. Rodchenkov’s lawyer. “The time for appeasement and half measures must finally come to an end. If RUSADA is not now banned, the last measure of WADA’s integrity will vanish. The time has come for meaningful criminal enforcement, as the current structure is broken beyond repair, so I applaud the US Congress for introducing the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act and look forward to its passage in 2019.”