Russia has finally owned up to state-sponsored doping and agreed to allow international access to the Moscow laboratory at the centre of the scandal, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has revealed.
The dramatic U-turn comes after months of refusing to budge on the last two items of a "roadmap to compliance" that WADA set out for Russia's anti-doping agency (RUSADA) last year.
RUSADA, the Moscow anti-doping laboratory and its athletics federation were suspended in November 2015, when a WADA-sponsored investigation first uncovered the scale of Russia's doping.
The scandal widened, however, when a second investigation, led by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren in 2016, revealed that the conspiracy to cheat covered more than 1,000 athletes in 30 sports, and was directed from the Russian sports ministry.
That ultimately led to Russia having to send a neutral team to this year's Winter Games but work was already under way to rehabilitate RUSADA via a checklist of criteria, the so-called roadmap, which would be assessed by WADA's Compliance Review Committee (CRC).
But until Thursday, Russia had failed to meet the last two criteria: public acceptance of the McLaren report and unfettered access to the Moscow laboratory's stored anti-doping samples and computer data.
This was despite concerted efforts by WADA to find compromises that would enable the Russian authorities to save face and it left the CRC with little choice but to recommend that the ban be upheld when WADA's executive committee meets in the Seychelles next Thursday.
It would appear, however, that Russia has backed down, although many will feel it has still got exactly what it wanted by accepting as little responsibility for the doping as possible and maintaining some control over the investigation at the lab.
In a statement on Friday, WADA said the CRC has reviewed a new letter from the Russian sports ministry that "sufficiently acknowledged the issues identified in Russia, therefore fulfilling the first of the two outstanding criteria".
This is likely to mean that the Russians have agreed to admit certain individuals within the Russian ministry of sport and its "subordinated entities" were involved in the scandal.
And in regard to the final item on the roadmap, WADA said: "The CRC accepted that the new commitment to provide access to the data and samples in the Moscow laboratory to WADA via an independent expert would be sufficient to justify reinstatement, provided that the ExCo imposes a clear timeline."
Noting that it does not usually communicate these recommendations before ExCo meetings, WADA said it would be "fully discussed" by the 12-strong panel next week and praised the Russian authorities for "working very hard to rebuild a credible, and sustainable, anti-doping program in Russia".
With RUSADA restored to the anti-doping fold, the separate suspensions on Russia's athletics federation and Paralympic committee are also very likely to be lifted soon, as is the International Olympic Committee ban on allowing international federations to stage major events in the country.
How this rehabilitation will be received elsewhere remains to be seen.
On Thursday, UK Anti-Doping's Athlete Commission published on open letter to WADA president Sir Craig Reedie urging him not to back down on insisting Russia complies with the roadmap.
"This would be a catastrophe for clean sport," the commission wrote.
"The roadmap clearly outlines what Russia must do to be allowed back. To ignore these conditions, ignores the wishes of the athletes you are there to protect.
"Athletes will no longer have faith in the system. It will undermine trust in the essence of fair play on which sport is formed. Do not U-turn. Do not fail clean sport."
