DISINFO: The West criticises the Russian coronavirus vaccine because it can’t accept Russia’s primacy
SUMMARY
The West fears that after Russia became the first country to offer a solution to the virus that is haunting the planet, Russian authority will project over the western in global public opinion. Of course, the richest and most powerful in the world can’t accept it. This explains the laughable and sceptic reception that the Russian vaccine Sputnik V got in the circles of the countries and pharmaceutical corporations that consider themselves the lords and keepers of global health.
RESPONSE
This is a mix of several recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about alleged anti-Russian bias in the West and plots against Russia’s greatness. Contrary to the claim, reservations and criticism of the Sputnik V vaccine is not caused by a Western refusal to accept Russia’s alleged primacy but by the fact that Russia hasn’t completed large trials to test the vaccine’s safety and efficacy, and rolling out an inadequately vetted vaccine could endanger people who receive it. The World Health Organisation expressed some reservations about the procedure followed by Russia, initiating talks with Russian authorities about undertaking a review of the vaccine but refusing to endorse it right away. On August 2020, the WHO published a landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines, which considered the Russian project developed by Gamaleya Research Institute as being in Phase 1 of clinical testing. See other examples of these narratives in our database, such as the supposed anti-Russian bias of international institutions - be it the OPCW, the World Anti-Doping Agency or the United Nations - which always falsely accuse Russia; the alleged Russophobia of the EU; the affirmation that it is NATO and not the Kremlin who is involved in the Donbas conflict; or denials that Russia had any role in the poisoning of Sergey Skripal or the downing of MH17, that it interfered in other countries’ elections or that it waged a disinformation campaign on COVID-19.