Russia's anti-doping system failed to find athletes who cheated in international competition by taking performance enhancing drugs, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Wednesday.
Putin said Russia needed to admit that "substantiated cases of doping" had taken place across Russian sport.
"The system of doping control in Russia has failed – and it is our fault. We need to acknowledge that,” he said at a meeting dedicated to the 2019 Universiade Games in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk."It's absolutely unacceptable,."
The president said that Russia was cooperating with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and that a new "very efficient" doping control system was currently being developed at Moscow State University.
A report released by WADA in July 2016 revealed that more than a thousand Russian athletes in 30 different sports had been linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs or concealment of positive urine samples.
The investigation also found evidence that 12 Russian athletes who won medals at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi had substituted their urine samples prior to drug testing.
