WORLD Athletics says it is “very disappointed” that the Russian Athletics Federation (RUSAF) has failed to pay $6.3m (£5m) owed in fines and costs relating to the doping scandal.

In March, it fined RUSAF $10m (£7.8m) for breaching anti-doping rules.

In addition, any Russian athletes allowed to compete as neutrals would be banned from Tokyo 2020 if half of that fine was not paid by 1 July.

The issue will be discussed by the World Athletics Council this month.

On Wednesday, RUSAF’s chief Yevgeny Yurchenko said that the federation had insufficient funds to pay the amount – made up of $5m in fines and $1.3m in costs.

But World Athletics president Lord Coe criticised the Russian actions.

“We recognise these are difficult times, but we are very disappointed by the lack of progress made by RUSAF,” he said.

“The serious allegations of breaching the anti-doping rules resulted in a new Rusaf administration and we had assurances and hoped that change was on its way.

“However, the experience of the Russian Taskforce, chaired by Rune Andersen, is that this has fallen well short of expectations. Rusaf is letting its athletes down badly.”

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) sanctioned Russia in autumn 2019 after its anti-doping agency was declared non-compliant for manipulating laboratory data handed over to investigators in January 2019.

It had to hand over data to WADA as a condition of its controversial reinstatement in 2018 after a three-year suspension for its vast state-sponsored doping scandal.

In December 2019, Russia was given a four-year ban from all major sports events.(BBC Sport)