Samples from the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics are also being retested.
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The IOC also said that it is awaiting the result of 250 retests from London 2012, with the aim “to stop any drugs cheats coming to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro”.
Mutko emphasised Russia’s efforts to promote anti-doping including working on to pass a new law that would make the use of dope a criminal offense.
The Russian athletics federation said in a statement on Tuesday that it would bar all athlete found to have doped in previous years from competing at Rio.
“I don’t think the IAAF has any grounds not to restore our team to competition for the Rio Olympics”, Mutko said.
Silver medal winners whose doping retests reportedly came back positive were javelin thrower Maria Abakumova, 4×400 relay runners Anastasia Kapachinskaya and Tatiana Firova, and weightlifter Maria Shainova, Russian state sports channel Match TV said.
A view through a fence, decorated with the Olympic rings, shows a building of the federal state budgetary institution “Federal scientific centre of physical culture and sports”, which houses a laboratory accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), in Moscow, Russia on November 11, 2015.
It is thought, however, that Olympic high jump champion Anna Chicherova is among those suspected athletes, after her coach Yevgeny Zagorulko told Russian news agency Tass that Chicherova had been notified of a failed test.
Wada had demanded that Kenyan authorities amend the country’s anti-doping laws after many of its athletes were found involved in drug scandals in the past few years.
“We would like to start the new year on a fresh page”, she said. But the head of the ROC’s legal department, Anna Brilliantova, was quoted on its website as saying that the second “B” samples of all the athletes under suspicion will be checked in Switzerland on 31 May and 1 June, 2016.
Butov added that the move only applies to the Olympics while athletes who have served sanctions can compete at other events. The information could not be immediately verified, however, and Russia’s sports minister said it would be unfair to name and shame before further testing.
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He said “serious work” had been carried out, citing the presence of worldwide observers at Russia’s anti-doping agency RUSADA and a rigorous staff overhaul at the Russian Athletics Federation.
