Russia's doping-tainted minister Vitaly Mutko lost his sports brief in a new government announced less than one month before the start of the World Cup. Mutko was named as one of the architects of a state-sponsored cheating programme among Russian athletes that led to the country being banned from last winter's Olympic Games in Pyeongchang.
He served as sports minister from 2008 until 2016 and oversaw sports as deputy prime minister until Friday. The 59-year-old also played an instrumental role in preparations for the football showpiece Russia is hosting for the first time from June 14 to July 15. President Vladimir Putin approved a new government on Friday in which Mutko kept his deputy prime minister post but was put in charge of construction instead.
Mutko had said after Putin's re-election to a fourth term in March that he would like to continue overseeing sports in the government. "Sport is a part of me - it lives in my soul and in my heart," Mutko said on May 9. "Sport will be a part of me for the rest of my life. I will always help it in any way I can." Russia has angrily denied charges of running a government programme that helped athletes stay clean before and during the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.
Whistle-blower Grigory Rodchenkov - the former head of a Moscow laboratory at the heart of the allegations - says that dirty doping samples were swapped for clean ones by Russian security service agents. Rodchenkov claims that Mutko was overseeing the operation under direct orders from Putin. The saga has had wider implications for the World Cup as well.
Mutko was forced to resign as Russian football federation president after being handed a lifetime Olympic ban in December. The global football governing body FIFA will be in charge of all testing procedures in Russia. It will fly the samples to its Swiss labs for analysis because the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) has been stripped of accreditation.
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