Russia will tighten responsibility for doping violations: Putin

Russia will tighten the responsibility for doping abuse by athletes while law enforcers will be empowered to investigate such cases, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

"The responsibility must be tightened," Putin on Friday said adding that he had discussed the issue with the government on Thursday.

"We've made a decision to support amendments to tighten legislation: to enhance responsibility and to adopt legislation allowing the use of detective and policing methods to let our law enforcers use investigative methods to expose the use and proliferation of doping substances," Putin said, adding he hoped a future State Duma would support the amendments.

Commenting on the situation around accusations of doping abuse by Russian athletes, Putin noted that Russia is thankful to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and promised to study its information on doping among Russian athletes attentively, reports Tass.

"We should be thankful to our counterparts from WADA and should treat the information they've provided in a most serious way," he said, adding that Russia has always fought with doping at state level and will continue doing it.

"We hope the information we'll be receiving ourselves or will be getting otherwise will be unbiased," Putin said adding this is the sphere where conclusions should not be made on the basis of rumours or simply suspicions.

"We must get facts," he said. In his words, Russia's prosecutor general's office and the Investigations Committee conduct corresponding checks and taking efforts to receive such facts.

"It is inadmissible to rely on the words of people who say it was them to commit violations and spread doping," Putin stressed. "It is them who are violators and who are responsible for this situation."

Russian sport has been in the center of doping-related scandals since last year. Starting this year doping control in Russian sports has been exercised by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) strictly under the supervision of the British anti-doping agency (UKAD).

--IANS

pur/vm