The prospect of Russia boycotting an Olympics for the first time since 1984 is a step closer after its national anti-doping agency failed to have its suspension lifted.

The Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) was declared noncompliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency’s rules when the details of Russia’s systemic cheating first emerged in November 2015. With the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang just 12 weeks away, Thursday’s Wada foundation board meeting in Seoul was the last scheduled chance for Rusada to convince anti-doping leaders it had met the terms of a “road map” to compliance.

While Rusada has met almost every technical item on the 31-point list, much of which has been overseen by UK Anti-Doping, it has refused to comply with two fundamental criteria. Even despite the recent discovery of further evidence to corroborate the case against them, the Russian authorities will still not admit they ran a state-sponsored doping programme or allow access to blood and urine samples stored in the Moscow anti-doping laboratory at the heart of the conspiracy.

By refusing to meet these requirements, the Russian delegation’s efforts to persuade the 38-strong foundation board, which represents the governments and Olympic sports that co-fund Wada, to lift Rusada’s ban were doomed.

This was confirmed by Wada on its Twitter feed and it is understood the mood was so strong that the Wada president, Sir Craig Reedie, did not need to put it to a vote. A full statement is expected later on Thursday.

The implications of Wada’s decision will be played out over the coming weeks but it is an understatement to say the situation is fluid and the stakes are high. Russia has been under threat of an Olympic ban ever since Professor Richard McLaren’s independent investigation found evidence to support the claims by Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, the former chief of the Moscow lab, that Russia doped hundreds of athletes, in 30 sports, between 2011 and 2015.

The doping programme helped Russia win medals at London 2012, the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow and most notably at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The next key date is 5 December, when the International Olympic Committee’s executive board meets in Lausanne to decide what involvement, if any, Russia should have in Pyeongchang.

There are several sanctions possible, ranging from a repeat of the limited punishment Russia faced at last summer’s Rio Games, to allowing only carefully vetted, “neutral” Russians to compete. That is the option the International Association of Athletics Federations took in November 2015 and that sanction remains in force, while the International Paralympic Committee completely banned Russians from the Rio Games.

Russian sports leaders, however, have made it clear they will boycott Pyeongchang if athletes are forced to compete as neutrals, which would mean no Russian anthem, flags, uniforms, place on the medal table or role in the opening and closing ceremonies.

Rusada’s reinstatement was widely considered to be vital to Russia’s chances of avoiding this fate, although the IOC president, Thomas Bach, is understood to disagree. For him, the crucial recommendation will come from one of the two commissions he set up this year to assess the evidence uncovered by McLaren.

The first of those, led by the Swiss IOC member Denis Oswald, is looking at individual cases and has recently disqualified six Sochi Olympians and banned them for life. The second, led by a former president of Switzerland, Samuel Schmid, is the most important for any collective sanction Russia may face as it is looking at the state’s role in the conspiracy.

Wada has recently passed on to Schmid new evidence it received last month: an electronic record of every test conducted by the Moscow lab between 2012 and 2015. During that period, Dr Rodchenkov claims he was asking the Russian sports ministry if a positive test should be processed as such or covered up.

Reedie said earlier this week that the new evidence was a “game-changer” and that Wada “continues to stand behind the outcomes of the agency’s independent McLaren investigation”.