Russia has offered the world millions of doses of vaccine: can it deliver?

In its foreign policy, Russia tends to favor tough military might and oil and gas exports. But in recent months, The Kremlin achieved a broad diplomatic triumph from an unexpected source: the success of its COVID vaccine, Sputnik V.

While the United States and European countries have considered or imposed bans on vaccine exports, Russia has been applauded for sharing its vaccine with countries around the world in an apparent act of lucid self-interest.

Until now, More than 50 countries, from Latin America to Asia, have requested 1.2 billion doses of Russian vaccine, which helped improve the image of Russian science and increase Moscow’s influence in the world.

However, in Russia, things are not always what they seem, and this apparent triumph of soft power diplomacy may not be all the Kremlin wants the world to think. While Sputnik V is unmistakably effective, its production is being delayed, raising the question of whether Moscow promises to export far more vaccine than it can supply.at the expense of its own citizens.

The actual number of doses distributed in Russia is a state secret, said Dmitri Kulish, a professor at the Skoltovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow. However, Russian officials are bragging about massive vaccine exports and rejoicing. from the warm glow of the vaccine. diplomacy it engendered.

“Soft power is the huge, wide gap in Russia’s global status,” Cliff Kupchan, chairman of risk consultancy Eurasia Group and former US diplomat, said in a telephone interview. “If you play your cards right here, the vaccines could be very important.”

European officials have begun to counter Russia’s aggressive commercialization of Sputnik.

“We continue to wonder why Russia is theoretically offering millions and millions of doses without making enough progress in vaccinating its own population,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday during a press conference. “You must answer this question.”

Despite the doubts, Vaccine diplomacy has already served a number of purposes for MoscowHe helped deepen divisions within the European Union, sending a shipment to Hungary before regulators approved it for the bloc as a whole. stoked internal discord in Ukraine by highlighting the slow supply of Western vaccines in the country; and the disinformation spread in Latin America that has undermined public confidence in vaccines made in the United States.

“We are ready to lay pipelines and provide cheap energy, we can sell them weapons and now we have this other dimension, this soft power: we are ready to offer them vaccines,” said Andrey Kortunov, president. of the Russian Council for International Affairs. , a non-governmental group that analyzes Russian foreign policy.

Ignoring his criticisms, the Kremlin has taken every opportunity to highlight its exports, some of them quite insignificant.

Sufficient vaccine supply for 10,000 people, for example, arrived in Bolivia last month with the pump usually reserved for state visits: it was received at the airport by the country’s president, Luis Arce, and the Russian ambassador.

“We congratulate the brotherly people of Bolivia for a qualitatively new level in the fight against the coronavirus,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Sputnik is entering new orbits,” boasted a report on state television this month, proudly showing boxes containing thousands of doses of vaccine loaded on a plane leaving Russia for Argentina.

In Russia, at least so far, there has been little negative reaction to exports, despite the fact that at the end of 2020 it was the third country in the world with the highest number of excess mortality, after the United States and Brazil.

Only 2.2 million Russians (less than 2%) received a first dose of the two-dose vaccine. In the United States, by contrast, 40.3 million people (about 12%) received the first injections, despite the fact that vaccination was uneven..

The reason for this lack of public acceptanceAnalysts say many Russians are so wary of their own government that they reject clinical trials that have shown Sputnik V to be safe and highly effective. In a poll taken last fall, 59% of Russians said they had no intention of getting the vaccine.

The mistrust runs so deep that well-stocked vaccination centers in Moscow are often empty. The fears have not been alleviated by the example of President Vladimir Putin, who has not yet been vaccinated.

“If massive demand for vaccines arises, running up against drug shortages due to export, this could become a political issue,” Ekaterina Schulmann, associate member of Chatham House, a London-based research institute, told About the use of the vaccine in foreign police. “Now anyone who wants to be vaccinated can do so, so it is rather a source of pride that Russia was among the first to be vaccinated and that we are helping others as well.”

It’s unclear how long this situation will last, given vaccine production issues, which are somewhat emblematic of Russia’s overall economic problems, largely resulting from state control.

The vaccine patent is controlled by two state institutions: a research institute and a sovereign fund. These institutions manage the export and production agreements, while seven private pharmaceutical factories manufacture most vaccines under contracts that offer little financial incentive for innovation or even long-term investment. .

Professor Kulish, a consultant to Russian pharmaceutical companies, said several vaccine manufacturers delayed production for several months last year in anticipation of critical pieces of Chinese-made equipment that were in short supply during the pandemic.

“Unfortunately, Russia does not produce any biotechnology equipmentHe said, adding that he expected production to increase from this month.

But that remains to be seen. This week, vials of Sputnik vaccine, each containing five doses and the potential to save lives, rolled off a production line at a vaccine production plant under contract with the company outside of St. Petersburg. .

However, increasing production was a challenge. “It’s a very fickle technology,” said Dmitry Morozov, CEO of the company, Biocad. His company was awarded the contract in September, and by early February it had produced just 1.8 million two-dose sets, far from the hundreds of millions the Kremlin promised to foreign buyers.

Morozov said his factory has the capacity to produce twice as many vaccines. But vaccine contracts are so onerous that it is losing money on production, forcing it last fall to reserve half its capacity for a profitable cancer drug. Since then he has added additional vaccine lines.

Long-term, Russia is looking for foreign producers to develop its production and has signed agreements with Indian, South Korean and Chinese companies. But it looks like these companies are months away to produce the vaccine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month that future production abroad will meet foreign demand, thus avoiding shortages at home.

For the moment, Russian doctors who frequent overcrowded COVID-19 wards are complaining that they had to continue working without being offered the vaccine. Yuri Korovin, a 62-year-old surgeon from the Novgorod region, northwest of Moscow, never received a dose until he fell ill at the end of December.

“Of course you can’t forget your own peopleHe said of exports, still coughing and short of breath, in a telephone interview.

© The New York Times 2021