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President Vladimir Putin said late on Tuesday that Zhukov had
told him he wanted to leave the role so he could concentrate on
his other job as first deputy speaker in the lower house of the
Russian parliament.
"This is without doubt the right thing, we support it
completely," Putin said at a meeting of sports officials in
Vladimir region, about 250 km (150 miles) east of Moscow, that
Zhukov was attending. "Alexander Dmitriyevich (Zhukov) has done
a lot for sport and, I hope, will do more still," Putin added.
Officials' comments made no connection between Zhukov's
departure and the doping scandal, which also resulted in
Russia's entire Paralympic team being barred from the Paralympic
Games in Rio.
A report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency concluded
that Russia had run a state-sponsored program to give
performance-enhancing drugs to elite athletes, and to cover up
positive doping tests.
The report described how, in a clandestine night-time operation
at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, southern Russia, positive
samples were smuggled out of a lab through a hole drilled in the
wall, and then replaced with clean samples.
Russia acknowledged that there were shortcomings in its
anti-doping operations, but said it was being unfairly singled
out for punishment for political reasons while doping by other
countries was ignored.
Zhukov, a Putin ally and former deputy prime minister, has been
president of the Russian Olympic Committee since 2010, and was
chairman of the Organising Committee for the Sochi Winter Games.
(Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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