Russia’s abominable record of doping its athletes in international competitions finally forced President Vladimir Putin to concede some shortcomings this week — but not his government’s basic culpability in the cheating.
With global sports increasingly banning Russian athletes from competition, Mr. Putin admitted that his nation’s anti-doping system has failed, “and this is our fault, and is something we need to admit and address directly.” But he continued to deny investigators’ finding that Moscow’s supposed monitoring system masked a government scheme in which an estimated 1,000 athletes had been involved in doping over the years in 30 different sports.