Although the sport's powerhouses Russia were again the dominant force with 12 of the 27 gold medals going their way, they managed six less than they did at last year's event in Belarus' capital Minsk.

That was largely down to the superb performance of Ukraine in combat men's competition, winning five of the nine titles on offer in the discipline.

The Ukrainians amassed an impressive seven gold medals overall with their other two coming in women's competition.

Also winning gold medals were Belarus and Georgia, with two each, as well as Armenia, Bulgaria, France and Moldova.

Eliseev, who is also President of the Russian Sambo Federation and vice-president of the International Sambo Federation (FIAS), believes the competitiveness bodes well for the future of the sport.

"It shows us that sambo in Europe has been developing well everywhere," he told insidethegames.

"So we can say that there is no one country which is dominating.

"The level of fighter has been increased and many other countries have won medals.

"The system which was created for European sambo now gives the chance to other countries to make their level of sambo higher."

On top of the eight gold medal-winning countries, who shared a further 63 podiums between them, there were also top-three finishes for Azerbaijan, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Spain. 

Romania claimed one silver and one bronze medal, while there were four bronzes for Azerbaijan, three for Spain and Serbia, and one each for Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, The Netherlands and Slovakia. 

FIAS is continually striving to achieve recognition from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Eliseev thinks it is therefore "crucial" that numerous countries are regularly competing for the highest honours.

"The International Olympic Committee watches very closely how many countries participate and to what countries the medals are distributed," he said.

"This is very important for our type of sport."

Asked if sambo is getting any closer to achieving IOC recognition, Eliseev replied: "We have almost satisfied all the criteria demanded by the IOC, so now we're just waiting for when our issue will be treated at an Executive Board meeting of the IOC."

In November of last year, Vasily Shestakov vowed to achieve sambo's "dream" of achieving recognition from the IOC after being unanimously re-elected unopposed as the President of the sport's world governing body in Sochi.

The Russian, first elected to the post in 2009, was nominated by Eliseev and received the backing of all 80 of the FIAS member federations that voted at the Congress.

In September, Shestakov said the world governing body was a "bit bemused" as to why it has not been granted recognition by the IOC and hinted his belief that the ongoing controversy surrounding Russia could be jeopardising the sport's chances.

Sambo was one of 14 sports to miss out on provisional IOC recognition in December 2016 as the International Cheer Union and International Federation of Muaythai Amateur were both accepted.

Russia is very much the dominant force in sambo, which originated in the Soviet Union in the 1920s when soldiers of the then-Soviet Army developed their own hand-to-hand combat technique.

The country is currently at the centre of a controversial doping scandal that has now been running for more than three years and has had a significant impact on national sports teams.