It has not been a good week for Russian sport: it began with the threat of expulsion from Euro 2016 and the arrest of fans in southern France, and ended with the IAAF’s decision to uphold the ban on Russian track and field athletes competing at the Rio Olympics.

In Moscow, the response to both has been to cry foul and pin the blame on an “anti-Russian” mood internationally.

The ministry of sport was quick to respond that the decision by the International Association of Athletics Federations would “diminish” the Olympics and destroy the dreams of clean athletes. Russia insists it has been doing everything possible to clean up its system, but an interim report from the World Anti-Doping Agency suggests otherwise.

Few people internationally have found convincing Russia’s insistence, repeated by Vladimir Putin, the president, on Friday, that the state had nothing to do with coordinating, abetting, or at least turning a blind eye to the country’s doping system.

As with football violence, the official response to the doping scandal as it played out over recent months has veered between shoulder shrugging and a grudging acceptance that there is a problem, while repeatedly emphasising that Russia is not the only culprit.

Initially, the sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, reacted furiously to the allegations against Russia, describing them as a “political hit job”.

But as it became clear Russia’s track and field athletes were at serious risk of missing the Olympics, Mutko’s ministry hired the PR giant Burson Marsteller to help with crafting its image in the international press, and the tone changed.

Suddenly, Russian officials became more apologetic, and insisted everything possible was being done to clean up the country’s act. Tours of testing facilities were organised for foreign media and athletes were put up for interview to explain just how devastating it would be to miss out on the Olympics after years of training.

This week, in the build-up to the verdict, the push to emphasise how unfair it would be for the country’s honest athletes to face a blanket ban on competing has intensified.

Global issue

“Doping is a global issue that has cast a shadow over athletics in many countries,” the pole vault legend Yelena Isinbayeva, who hoped to compete in her fifth and final games in Rio, wrote in an opinion piece for the

New York Times

.

“So if some Russian athletes have failed doping tests, why must Russia’s clean athletes face a ban? Why shouldn’t we be able to compete in Rio against the clean athletes from other countries?”

Mutko also wrote an open letter to Coe on Friday, with the same message.

“Russia has done everything that IAAF independent commission has rightly asked of us in order to be reinstated to athletic competition,” he wrote.

However, an interim report from Wada released earlier this week painted a very different picture. It spoke of testing officers being intimidated or misled by security staff, of athletes giving addresses in closed military cities, making it impossible to test them. In one case, it said a female athlete had attempted to give a urine sample from “a container inserted inside her body”. When the ruse was rumbled, the athlete attempted to bribe the anti-doping officer, the report claimed.

Extraordinary allegations

Perhaps the most extraordinary allegations of all were those made by Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia’s anti-doping lab, who has now fled to the US.

He claims to have run a sophisticated state-sanctioned scheme at the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, to ensure crooked athletes’ samples were replaced clandestinely with clean ones. The allegations are yet to be proved but have added to the sour atmosphere around Russian sport internationally.

Inside the country, the atmosphere of Russia as a fortress besieged by a jealous West has been contributed to by the way the media have covered the sporting scandals.

During a studio discussion about the fan violence earlier this week on state television, the host crossed live to a correspondent in France and asked about the situation where English fans had rushed the Russian fans at the final whistle in Marseille.

The correspondent began to point out that actually the situation was the reverse, only to be interrupted by the host who said England fans had dressed up as Russia fans to cause “provocations”. An angry studio guest asked him if he even supported Russia, given he dared to speak ill of Russia fans.

The atmosphere of unquestioning patriotism can make it difficult to speak openly about the problems.

Returning to the theme of the hooliganism on Friday, Putin joked about the violence: “I don’t know how 200 Russian fans managed to crush several thousand English,” the Russian president said to applause, at an economic forum in St Petersburg.

The Olympic ban is no joking matter, however, which explains why the tone is less cynical and more pleading. Russia still hopes the IOC might pave the way for some kind of compromise solution.

“We now appeal to the members of the International Olympic Committee to not only consider the impact that our athletes’ exclusion will have on their dreams and the people of Russia, but also that the Olympics themselves will be diminished by their absence,” said the statement from the sports ministry. Guardian Service