In February this year, Russian veteran journalist Alexey Venediktov singled out three achievements Russian President Vladimir Putin felt most proud of at the time. Those were Moscow’s peace-making efforts in Nagorno-Karabakh, the development of new weaponry and the Russia-developed coronavirus vaccine. Given Putin’s predilection for public appraisal of the Russian vaccines, there are no grounds to distrust Venediktov’s observation, which came on the back of a traditional private meeting between Putin and editors-in-chief of the Russian media.
Hence, one should not be surprised by looking at how sensitive Russian authorities become when confronted with any criticism of the Sputnik V vaccine. Moscow is assiduous in promoting the home-produced drug around the world, including in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region. But however hard the Russian propaganda machine works to pin all the blame for Sputnik V’s troubles on the Western plot against Russia, there is no way around the fact that the development, production and distribution of the vaccine were hastily handled. This was aggravated by disinformation, violation of rules and incompetence on the Russian side.
