Sputnik V Causes Discord in Former Soviet Satellites: Political Weapon or Propaganda?

PRAGUE.– Russian Sputnik V vaccine spawned rift between former Eastern bloc countries that depended on Moscow, some of which see it as a blessing and others as a Kremlin propaganda tool.

Countries in the region were particularly affected by the virus and are taken between vaccines -Now available- of his former ally and European Union (EU) resistance to Russian influence.

Analysts say the disputes have benefited Russia and its efforts to sow discord in the region since the fall of communism more than three decades ago.

“It is clear that Sputnik V has become a tool of soft power for Russia”, die Michal baranowski, of US German Marshall Fund.

“The political aim of the (Russian) strategy is to divide the West,” says Baranowski, who heads the office of the Warsaw Foundation.

Slovakia faced a government crisis just days after receiving its first batch of Sputnik V vaccine on March 1.

Prime Minister Igor Matovic praised the drug, assuring that “Covid-19 knows nothing about geopolitics”, while Chancellor Ivan Korcok sees the vaccine as a “hybrid weapon of war”.

The vaccine is 91.6% effective against the coronavirus, according to a recent study, and has already been administered in several countries.

It has yet to be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to be able to use it in the EU, although some Eastern European countries have already started to apply it.

EU member countries such as Slovakia begins to look east after maddening slowness with which Europe launched vaccination campaign with Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, AstraZeneca-Oxford Yes Modern.

Experts say rapid vaccination is the only way to overcome the coronavirus crisis which is particularly hitting countries in central and eastern Europe.

Slovakia and neighboring Czech Republic have the highest death rates in the world for weeks, according to official data, and hospitals in the countries of the Soviet exorbit are about to overflow.

Czech President Milos Zeman last month asked his ally Vladimir Putin by letter to provide Sputnik.

“I think I will help my country in this way,” Zeman said.

When the Czech Minister of Health refused to accept a vaccine not approved by the EMA, Zeman called for his resignation.

“The potential use of Sputnik V in the Czech Republic has become exclusively a political weapon of political struggle and propaganda”, he says analyst Jiri Pehe, in Prague.

He assures that Russia has problems producing the doses of Sputnik for its needs and that there are questions about the conditions under which the vaccine was produced.

“If Vladimir Putin had really trusted the vaccine, he would have been the first to give it to him in full swing, but he’s avoiding it,” says Pehe..

Pavel Havlicek, analyst at the Prague-based Association for International Affairs, says the Kremlin is “rubbing its hands” in the meantime.

“Russian vaccine diplomacy is clearly trying to undermine mutual trust and cohesion in Europe,” he said.

The first and so far the only EU country to administer Sputnik V is Hungary, which the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Peter Szijjarto, wore to convince his compatriots.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban, promoter of relations with Putin, received a dose of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine, which Hungary also began to administer – first in the EU – in February.

In other parts of post-communist Europe, Serbia has become one of the fastest vaccinators in the world by turning to Sputnik and Sinopharm vaccines, while Albania plans to start negotiating supplies for the two.

EU members Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Romania, however, await EMA approval of Sputnik, while Lithuania excluded it. Poland does not plan to use it either.

“Russia has clearly placed the Russian flag on the Sputnik vaccine and in Poland anything that has the Russian flag will not be welcomed with open arms,” says Baranowski.

Agencia AFP

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