RUSSIA on Wednesday blasted a report in The New York Times that officials have acknowledged a massive sports doping conspiracy, reiterating claims there was no government involvement.

    The New York Times reported Tuesday that the acting director general of Russia’s scandal-mired national anti-doping agency had “for the first time” conceded officials conducted the program to cheat.

    “It was an institutional conspiracy,” Anna Antseliovich was reported as telling the U.S. newspaper in an article datelined from Moscow.

    Antseliovich and others interviewed continued to reject the characterization of the doping as “state-sponsored,” telling the Times that top government officials were not involved.

    But Moscow later slammed the article, with anti-doping agency RUSADA insisting that Antseliovich’s words were “distorted and taken out of context.”

    The New York Times reporter “took these words out of context, creating the impression that RUSADA’s leadership had admitted to an institutional system of a doping cover-up in Russia,” the agency said. “We want to underline that RUSADA does not and cannot have the authority to admit or deny such facts.”

    Investigator Richard McLaren said in a new report for the World Anti-Doping Agency this month that more than 1,000 Russian athletes in some 30 sports took part in a plan for Moscow sports ministry officials to use banned drugs at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the 2012 London Summer Games and other events.

    Russia has admitted that it had a problem with doping but insists that there is no proof there was a state-orchestrated program to cheat.

    “From the very beginning we have denied any involvement by the state or state institutions or services or agencies in the possible use of doping by sportsmen,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

    (SD-Agencies)