Oxides containing a mixture of 3d and 4d transition metal oxides can exhibit unusual electronic and magnetic properties. Members of the solid solution La2-xSrxCuRuO6 have been characterized by means X-ray spectroscopy and S-XRD at the Australian Synchrotron. X-ray spectroscopy at both the Ru and Cu L-edges has established, for the first time, that doping with Sr induces oxidation of the Cu rather than Ru. It was expected that reducing the amount of the Jahn-Teller active Cu2+ ion would favor higher symmetry; however, an unexpected result from our synchrotron powder diffraction measurements is that doping La2CuRuO6 with Sr lowers the symmetry from monoclinic to triclinic. Moreover, the S-XRD profiles show unusual anisotropic peak broadening. Understanding the symmetry lowering and the anisotropic peak broadening requires high resolution neutron diffraction data.