“We do not support what the hackers do, but what they did can not but be of interest to the worldwide community, and most of all to the sports community”, he added.
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“It raises a lot of questions”.
Putin’s comments came just a few hours before the Russian hacking group Tsar Team (APT28), also known as Fancy Bears, released a third batch of leaked test data.
Putin slammed the fact that “healthy athletes” had been allowed to take forbidden medication while Russia’s Paralympians had been excluded from the Rio Paralympics “under suspicion of having taken some kind of drugs”. The latest leaks implicates a further 11 athletes from Germany, Britain and Spain, among others.
Prominent US sports stars – including tennis players Serena and Venus Williams, multiple Olympic gymnastics champion Simone Biles, and basketball player Elena Delle Donne – were mentioned among those who had received exemptions from WADA.
WADA called the hack “retaliation” after it released reports detailing the cheating and called on Russian Federation to help stop the hacking of its computer systems.
Putin’s statement on Friday came as IOC President Thomas Bach said he will ask Moscow for help to stop the hackers, which the World Anti-Doping Agency said were linked to Russian Federation.
“In some cases, it is also a breach of confidentiality for athletes whose cases have not yet been finalised”.
The whole Russian Paralympic team is missing out on the ongoing Paralympic Games in Rio, Brazil, after the International Paralympic Committee followed WADA’s advice and handed a blanket ban to the country over its alleged doping program.
WADA has said that the accounts include confidential data, including Therapeutic Use Exemptions.
Medical exemptions allowed athletes to take otherwise banned substances, he said.
“The IOC fully support the actions taken by WADA to deal with the leak, including the measures that are being taken to bring this activity to an end with the help of IT experts and in requesting assistance from the Russian authorities”, Bach said in his statement.
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The agency’s independent McLaren report, released in July, said that Russians had swapped positive doping samples for clean ones during the 2014 Sochi Olympics, with the support of the Russian secret service.
