Ahead of the start of the Winter Olympics, anti-doping chiefs across Europe are criticizing the International Olympic Committee over a controversial pseudo-ban on Russian athletes.

In December, the IOC kicked the Russian Olympic Committee out of the 2018 event over a systematic, state-sponsored doping program at the Sochi games in 2014. However, despite the ban, Russia will send more than 160 athletes to the Winter Olympics, which officially opens in Pyeongchang, South Korea, on Friday. They will compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” — supposedly neutral athletes competing under the Olympic flag rather than that of their own country.

A senior official at a European anti-doping organization who didn't want to be named said some in the anti-doping world believe IOC President Thomas Bach’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin may have contributed to the lenient handling of the Russia case.

When the IOC banned the Russians, it did so with a caveat — that athletes who could prove they were clean would be allowed to attend. In doing so, it opened the door to a Russia squad almost the same size as the one Moscow sent to the Vancouver 2010 games.

“There should have been an outright ban, and the criteria for eventual neutral athletes should have been harder" — Matt Richardson, CEO of the Swedish anti-doping agency

Anti-doping bosses from winter sport powerhouses don't believe the IOC should be welcoming athletes from a country that defrauded the system in Sochi.

"To call it a ban is a sleight of hand," said Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. "I think they [the IOC] have let down clean athletes. You hear athletes speaking out like never before on their frustration; not only those who were robbed in Sochi, but those who are potentially going to be robbed again."

Tygart also slammed the IOC top brass for their role in the crisis. "Unfortunately the leadership here has fallen and as a result clean athletes are at the brink of believing the Olympic values are dying, if not close to being dead," he said.

European anti-doping chiefs also voiced their anger at the governing body.

“Has the IOC done what needs to be done to ensure the best games possible?” asked Herman Ram, director of the Anti-Doping Authority of the Netherlands. “No, certainly not. I don't think the IOC can claim they have done a really good job there. In the end, the IOC is trying to protect the games and not the individual [clean] athletes.”

Matt Richardson, CEO of the Swedish anti-doping agency, said, “There should have been an outright ban, and the criteria for eventual neutral athletes should have been harder.” He added: “There are 169 [Russian] athletes on the start line and it's very difficult for us to understand how that is a punishment for Russia's treatment of the anti-doping system.”

Russian athletes who win medals in South Korea will stand under the Olympic flag, and gold medalists will have the Olympic anthem, not the Russian one, played while they stand on the podium. While Russian stars like speed skater Viktor Ahn and cross-country skier Sergey Ustyugov have not met the IOC criteria for competing, the squad is still packed with medal contenders in many sports.

There were still, even at this late stage, 47 Russian athletes and coaches hoping for a last-minute intervention to allow them to compete in Pyeongchang. But in the early hours of Friday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) dismissed the group’s appeals against their Olympic bans.

The IOC’s vetting procedure for athletes wishing to compete in Pyeongchang has also come in for criticism. A comprehensive, transparent investigation “would benefit both Russia and the rest of the sport … and not just put it under the carpet after the Olympic Games,” according to Anders Solheim, CEO of Norway's anti-doping agency.

“It seems to me that people will forget without getting to the bottom of this case,” said Solheim. “If you're going to find out, you need to get access to all relevant information and you need to interview those people, and to interview those people you need investigators, you need the competence, you need the funding, and I can't really see that that is put high on the priority list of the IOC.”

The IOC rejects the allegations of tolerance toward Russia. “Seventy-five percent of the Russian athletes have never competed in an Olympic Games before," said a spokesman for the IOC. "Those who criticize us would like us to take a blanket ban on athletes, many of whom have never competed before. It's a question of whether you believe in individual justice or not.” The spokesman also dismissed claims of a link between Bach and Putin.

Russia finished top of the medal table in Sochi, but it was later revealed that a sophisticated drug program had benefited dozens of athletes. Grigory Rodchenkov was director of the anti-doping laboratory in Sochi, and in 2016 he blew the whistle on a complex scheme that involved anti-doping staff and Russian intelligence officials switching tainted urine samples with clean ones under the cover of darkness.

"Are they all clean, no, of course not. That's the ideal world we'll never live in" — Herman Ram, director of the Anti-Doping Authority of the Netherlands

The allegations from Rodchenkov, who now lives in hiding in the U.S., include repeated claims that the Sochi doping plot went to the heart of the Kremlin, heavily implicating Vitaly Mutko, a deputy prime minister. Putin dismissed Rodchenkov as a “nutjob” who “should be put in prison.”

Tygart was scathing in his assessment of the IOC's treatment of informants such as Rodchenkov. He pointed to a direct threat from a Russian IOC honorary member who said Rodchenkov should be shot. "I think it's shameful how the IOC have treated all the whistleblowers. It's disgraceful," Tygart said.

Russia has repeatedly protested its innocence regarding the Sochi cheating allegations. “Discrediting Russia was fashionable [but] as soon as they got to a cross-examination, some elementary basis in law, it all fell apart immediately," Mutko told the AP earlier this month.

That hasn't convinced Russia's competitors on the slopes.

“When you put the money and time into [anti-doping], you feel like there's a certain level of integrity there,” said Richardson of the Swedish anti-doping agency. “But we know that, on the other hand, there are some countries that don't have the same level of rigorousness as we do and we don't want those athletes showing up against our athletes.”

“There is no such thing as clean sport. But there surely is cleaner sport and I'm still convinced that most of the athletic performance in these games will be clean,” said Ram of the Netherlands. “But are they all clean, no, of course not. That's the ideal world we'll never live in.”

This story has been updated with the result of the Court of Arbitration for Sport appeal.