Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday (27th July) that his country "cannot and will not accept what is pure discrimination" as he spoke to Russia's athletes selected for next month's Olympics.

SOUNDBITE: (Russian) Vladimir Putin:

"Short-sighted pseudo-politicians can't leave sports alone, even though it's sports which unites peoples and smoothes contradictions existing between countries. The situation we have today has gone beyond law regulations and common sense."

SOUNDBITE: (Russian) Vladimir Putin:

"I think that your colleagues from other leading sports countries of the world understand - even if not all of them speak about it openly - they all understand that the quality of their medals will be different now. Because it's one thing to win over strong equal competitors and it's a different thing when you compete with someone so obviously lower in class. Such victory has a completely different taste if any."

SOUNDBITE: (Russian) Vladimir Putin:

"We cannot accept indiscriminate disqualification of our athletes with absolutely clean doping histories. We cannot and will not accept what in fact is pure discrimination."