Putin’s comments came in a speech delivered at the "Russia is a Sports Power" forum in Perm today as reported by Russia’s official state news agency TASS.

Russian and Belarusian athletes had been largely frozen out of international sport following a recommendations by the IOC in response to the war in Ukraine.

The stance has since been eased with the IOC advising sporting organisations to allow them to compete as individual neutral athletes provided they do not support the war and are not affiliated to the military.

Under the IOC’s conditions, the flags and anthems of the two countries remain banned while the Russian and Belarusian teams continue to be barred from international competition.

The majority of International Federations have adhered to the recommendations, leading to athletes from Russia and Belarus participating as neutrals at World Championships.

However, the IOC has yet to make decision on Russian and Belarusian participation at Paris 2024.

IOC President Thomas Bach has claimed that his organisation's position has received growing support, but Putin argued that the conditions were discriminatory.

"The Games themselves can be used as a tool of political pressure against people who have nothing to do with politics, as crude and actually racist, ethnic discrimination," said Putin in a report by TASS.

"Thanks to some leaders of the modern International Olympic Committee, we learned that an invitation to the Games is not an unconditional right of the best athletes, but a kind of 'privilege', and it can be earned not by sports results, but by some kind of political gestures that have nothing to do with sports at all has nothing to do with it, and that the Games themselves can be used as a tool of political pressure against people who have nothing to do with politics.

"We also learned and heard that the Olympic Charter is supposedly outdated and no longer has a universal character.

"Some sports officials have arrogated to themselves the right to determine to whom it applies - this Olympic Charter - and to whom it does not.

"Such approaches contradict the very nature of sport.

"This, in fact, is the whole point of international sports movements."

Putin has instructed the organisation of the BRICS Games which is being viewed as a potential rival to the Olympics.

BRICS is a political alliance comprising of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The controversial multi-sport event is set to take place from June 12 to 23 next year in Kazan, just over one month before the start of the Olympics in Paris on July 26.

Russia has stressed that the BRICS Games is not an alternative to the Olympics and Putin insisted his country remained committed to Olympic principles.

"Our large, multinational sports family is being tested for cohesion, loyalty to the true values of sport, the Olympic principles of solidarity, equality, fair sports competition," said Putin.

"They have always been and remain unshakable for Russia."

The IOC has rejected all claims and said participation at the Olympics is not a "human right".

"Participation in the Olympic Games is by no means a human right and the recent amendment of the Olympic Charter is not related to it," the IOC said in its statement. 

"The strict conditions the IOC has defined in its recommendations to the International Federations for the participation of individual neutral athletes with a Russian or Belarusian passport in international competitions are compliant with the Olympic Charter. 

"They are a reaction to the breach of the Olympic Charter by the Russian and Belarusian governments.

"We firmly reject the accusations being made that these measures are an 'ethnic discrimination'."