MOSCOW, May 13. /TASS/. With six years already gone the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) still has not received from the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) official documents justifying a decision to ban the Russian national team from the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Brazil, RPC President Pavel Rozhkov said on Friday.

"The Russian Paralympic Committee was suspended from participating in the Summer Paralympics back in 2016," Rozhkov told journalists. "They stated back then that Russian Paralympians were part of the [alleged] state-sponsored anti-doping program."

"Six years went by since then and we haven’t received any official documents addressed either to the Russian Paralympic Committee or certain Russian Paralympians," the RPC chief continued.

"We became to be the first to be subjected political sanctions, which were planned in advance," Rozhkov added.

Russia at recent Paralympic Games

On August 7, 2016, the International Paralympic committee (the IPC) decided to bar the entire Russian team from taking part in the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on August 23, 2016 upheld the IPC’s ruling that came on the heels of a report delivered a month earlier by the WADA Independent Commission, chaired by Canadian sports law professor Richard McLaren.

Besides collectively punishing the Russian national team by banning it from the Rio Games, the IPC also decided to suspend the RPC membership in the international organization.

However, the team of Russian athletes, led by Rozhkov, was allowed to participate in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where it finished in 4th place of the overall medals standings among the rest of the national participants.

Para athletes from Russia also participated in the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in South Korea’s PyeongChang in the neutral status, dubbed as the Neutral Paralympic Athletes (NPA), as the membership of the RPC with the IPC (the International Paralympic Committee) was suspended at that period.

Russia’s so-called ‘neutral’ team of Para athletes brought home from PyeongChang a total of 24 medals, namely eight gold, 10 silver and six bronze, ranking second in the overall medal count of the 2018 PyeongChang Paralympics, after the national team of the United States.