OREANDA-NEWS. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland has barred senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, from attending the World Championships and the Olympics in the next two years. This follows from the CAS verdict on the dispute between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), reports RT.

The CAS decision of ban on attending major competitions applies to all top leadership of Russia: ministers, their deputies, the prime minister and his deputies, State Duma deputies, as well as the head of state.

An official subject to the ban may have ability for attendance only in case of personal invitation by the President or Prime Minister of the host country, or if he is a member of the IOC or the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

This prohibition however does not apply to athletes and their team members.

The Russian Olympic Committee outraged by the sanctions against Putin and consider them unacceptable. “It is difficult to imagine  the arbitrators supporting the decision to extend these measures to the head of a sovereign state. We take a position on the inadmissibility of such approaches,” R-Sport quotes the words of the head of the committee Stanislav Pozdnyakov.

The Kremlin declared their extremely negative attitude to the CAS decision. "But at the same time, it has already been noted by our sports leaders that the main thing is that athletes get the right to participate in international competitions," said Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov.

First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs Vladimir Dzhabarov said that Russia would challenge such a ban.

"This decision is an absolute lawlessness, it is completely indecent. Of course, Russia will challenge this decision, we will not leave it unanswered and unanswered," said the senator to RIA Novosti.

According to him, the CAS decision is legally unacceptable, because if there are guilty ones, then they should be punished, and not entire states or "the heads of the largest Olympic powers in the world".