London
The general secretary of the Russian athletics federation (ARAF) has acknowledged that his country has "a problem with doping" following a damning report by a World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) commission.
"We know our problem. We now have a problem with doping," Mikhail Butov told the BBC on Wednesday.
Butov is one of 27 members of the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) council, which will vote on Friday on proposals to suspend Russia from international competition in light of the report, which outlined evidence of a "state-sponsored" doping programme in the country.
But Butov said that such a move would penalise clean athletes.
"We should be against any limitation of participation at the highest level of competitions," he said. "We are sure we have absolutely clean athletes."
He added that "isolation of any federation is not a good way" and said that banning Russia would be "against our team and the clean athletes, but not problem athletes".
As well as banning Russia from international competition, the IAAF council could also strip the country of future events that it is set to host, such as the World Junior Championships due to be held in Kazan next July.
