The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) voted today to lift the ban on Russia’s Anti-Doping Agency subject to various conditions.

Thursday’s decision however was greeted with dismay by campaigners.

Wada vice-president Linda Helleland, who was the most senior member of the agency’s leadership to express opposition to reinstatement, said the decision cast a dark shadow over the credibility of the anti-doping movement.

Although the change will have no immediate effect on current bans on the Russian Federations for athletics, weightlifting and paralympics, it opens the door for their return.

This follows the reinstatement of the Russian Olympic Committee after the country was banned from this year’s winter games in South Korea.

RUSADA was suspended in November 2015 after an independent WADA report carried out by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren outlined evidence of massive state-backed, systematic doping and cover-ups in Russian sport.

Since then WADA has repeatedly said RUSADA would not be reinstated until it satisfied various key criteria on a “roadmap for return”, including recognizing the findings of the McLaren Report and allowing access to stored urine samples at RUSADA’s Moscow laboratory.

At Thursday’s WADA Executive Committee meeting in the Seychelles, members approved a lesser version of the first point – an acceptance of the IOC’s Schmid Report, which endorsed the core findings of the McLaren Report – and set another “clear timeline” for the implementation of the second.

That means, after remaining banned for refusing access to the Moscow lab, RUSADA is now approved, but could be banned again if access continues to be denied.