The Russian Paralympic Committee are due to receive criteria for their re-admission by mid-November ©RPC

Specific criteria for the lifting of Russia's suspension from the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) is expected to be provided by "mid-November", insidethegames has been told today.

This comes as meetings take place between the IPC and the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) in order to plan a timeline for their reinstatement.

The country was suspended in the wake of Richard McLaren’s damning report, which alleged the presence of a state-sponsored doping scheme at a number of major events, including the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Sochi.

No Russian athletes competed at last month's Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.

"The IPC recently informed the Russian Paralympic Committee that it endeavours to provide the reinstatement criteria to the Russian Paralympic Committee by mid-November," a spokesperson told insidethegames today.

RPC vice-president Pavel Rozhkov has called for more information within the "nearest future", adding to the TASS news agency that the issue of clearing athletes for qualifying tournaments in the run-up to the 2018 Winter Paralympics in Pyeongchang "must be resolved" before March.

Rozhkov also claimed that the World Curling Federation (WCF) has "already confirmed" its readiness to clear Russian Para-athletes for all competitions. 

insidethegames has asked the WCF to confirm these claims.

"The main concerns regard the skiing, biathlon, Alpine skiing, snowboarding and sledge-hockey," the official reportedly added.

A Russian Paralympic Committee official has claimed the World Curling Federation would allow Russian wheelchair athletes to return to international competition ©Getty Images
A Russian Paralympic Committee official has claimed the World Curling Federation would allow Russian wheelchair athletes to return to international competition ©Getty Images

The IPC ban, which withstood an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, has been fiercely criticised in Russia by figures from President Vladimir Putin downwards.

IPC President Sir Philip Craven has since been implicated in a prank phone call - released by the RT television station in Russia -  in which he claimed the country was still "non-cooperating".

"The Russians are not cooperating at the moment," he was recorded as saying to a prankster, who was pretending to be 400 metres hurdling champion turned United States Anti-Doping Agency chair, Edwin Moses.

"They are on the surface, they may seem as if they are, but they are not.

"We will be dealing with them, in the way we have been dealing with them ever since this thing happened, which is correctly, which is legally but we won’t be dealing with them as if they were friends."

More revelations on Russian doping in Sochi are expected to be revealed by the McLaren Report within the next month.