“The IOC adheres to the principle that 'sport is separate from politics' and will surely not yield to political pressure," Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said in an interview with Russian daily Kommersant.

"The location of the Olympics is not determined by American laws," Zhukov said in response to an initiative by two US lawmakers to ask the IOC to strip Russia of the Games as punishment for sending troops into neigbouring Georgia.

Zhukov, who is overseeing Russia's efforts to prepare for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, also dismissed concerns that the Black Sea resort town was too close to the conflict zone.

"The Olympics will only be in 2014, and now it's just 2008. Do you think this will still be a conflict zone by then? I don't think so," he said.

Sochi is about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border with Abkhazia, one of two Russian-backed separatist regions of Georgia that have seen fighting this month in the armed conflict between Moscow and Tbilisi.