Vitaly Mutko attends meeting to endorse Gianni Infantino's re-election bid as Fifa president despite lifetime IOC ban

The former Russian minister of sport was sanctioned in 2017 as a result of the country's doping scandal

Vitaly Mutko was responsible for Russia's successful World Cup bid

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko, who was banned from the Olympics for life over his country's doping scandals, appears to have returned to a senior role in Russian football.

Mutko said late last year he would step aside temporarily as Russian Football Union president after the International Olympic Committee imposed the ban. Fifa welcomed that decision ahead of Russia hosting the World Cup this year.

But the RFU says Mutko, who is still formally considered president, took part in a meeting on Wednesday to back Gianni Infantino's re-election bid next year as president of Fifa. The RFU didn't immediately respond to a question on clarifying Mutko's status.

Even after formally stepping aside, Mutko remained closely linked with Russian football and attended Russia national team training during the World Cup.

Mutko has always denied that the Russian doping system overseen by Dr Grigory Rodchenkov – the head of the country’s anti-doping lab until his defection to the United States in 2016 – for more than 10 years had state knowledge and approval, despite the scientist’s claims that the then minister of sport was aware of and endorsed the programme.

“Show me one state doping programme with my signature,” Mutko said in an interview with The Independent in December 2017, before referring to Rodchenkov’s claim that he ate the minister’s grapes during meetings in his office: “Let me see the evidence – and something more substantial than eating imaginary grapes.”

Mutko added that while there were cases of doping in Russian sport, they were no more common than in other countries and claimed that the IOC’s decision to remove the country’s team from the 2018 Winter Olympics was proof that “geopolitics had overtaken common sense”.