ST. PETERSBURG, Russia – Russia’s foreign policy tends to favor the hardships of military power and oil and gas exports. But over the past few months, the Kremlin has achieved an unexpected diplomatic victory: the success of its coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V.
While the United States and European countries have considered or enforced a ban on vaccine exports, Russia has received praise by sharing its vaccine with countries around the world in an apparent act of enlightened self-interest.
To date, more than 50 countries from Latin America to Asia have ordered 1.2 billion doses of Russian vaccine, which has boosted the image of Russian science and lifted Moscow’s influence around the world.
In Russia, however, things are not always as they seem, and this apparent triumph of diplomacy with soft powers may not be all the Kremlin wants the world to think. Although Sputnik V is undeniably effective, production is lagging behind, raising questions about whether Moscow might promise to export more vaccines than it can deliver, at the expense of its own citizens.
The actual number of doses distributed within Russia is a state secret, said Dmitry Kulish, a professor at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow. Russian officials nonetheless boast of massive vaccine exports and cherish them in the hot glow of the vaccine diplomacy that has been generated.
“Soft power is the gaping, gaping hole in Russia’s global status,” Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group risk consultancy and a former US diplomat, said in a telephone interview. “If they play their cards here, vaccines can be very important.”
European officials have begun pushing back on Russia’s aggressive marketing of Sputnik.
“We still wonder why Russia theoretically offers millions and millions of doses while not vaccinating its own people,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a news conference on Wednesday. “This question needs to be answered.”
Despite the doubts, the vaccine diplomacy has already advanced a number of goals for Moscow: it helped to deepen divisions within the European Union and sent a consignment to Hungary before the regulators approved it for the whole bloc; has fueled domestic strife in Ukraine by emphasizing slow Western vaccine supplies to the country; and disseminating disinformation in Latin America that undermines public confidence in vaccines in the United States.
“We are ready to lay down gas pipelines and supply cheap energy, we can sell weapons to you and now we have this other dimension, this gentle power: we are ready to offer you vaccination,” said Andrey V. Kortunov, chairman of the Russian said. International Affairs Council, a non-governmental group analyzing Russian foreign policy.
The Kremlin dismissed its critics and used every opportunity to highlight its output, some of which are rather insignificant.
For example, a stockpile of enough for 10,000 people arrived in Bolivia last month with the splendor usually reserved for state visits – at the airport greeted by the country’s president, Luis Arce, and the Russian ambassador.
“We congratulate the Bolivian brothers on a qualitatively new level in the fight against the coronavirus,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“Sputnik is entering new lanes,” a state television report said this month, proudly showing crates of thousands of doses of vaccine being loaded onto a plane leaving Russia for Argentina.
In Russia, so far, there has been little decline in exports, although by the end of 2020 it had the third highest number of excess deaths in the world after the United States and Brazil.
Only 2.2 million Russians (less than 2 percent) received a first dose of the shotgun vaccine. In the United States, by contrast, 40.3 million people (about 12 percent) received first injections, despite a rocky rollout.
The reason for the lack of public acceptance, analysts say, is that many Russians are so distrustful of their own government that their clinical trials reject Sputnik V as safe and highly effective. In a poll conducted last fall, 59 percent of Russians said they had no plans to be vaccinated.
The mistrust is so deep that the vaccination centers in Moscow are often empty. The fears were not helped by the example of President Vladimir V. Putin, who has not yet had to take the vaccine himself.
“If there is a huge demand for vaccination, which conflicts with the shortage of medication due to exports, it could become a political problem,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a fellow at Chatham House, a research institute in London. , said about the use of the vaccine in foreign policy. “Now, anyone who wants a vaccine can have it, so it’s rather a source of pride that Russia was among the first to have a vaccine and that we help others as well.”
It is unclear how long the state of affairs will last, given the problems with the production of vaccines, which in a way are indicative of Russia’s overall economic problems, which stem largely from state control.
The license for the vaccine is controlled by two state institutions, a research institute and a sovereign wealth fund. They cut both export and production transactions, while seven private pharmaceutical factories produce the bulk of the vaccine under contracts that offer little financial incentive for innovation or even long-term investments.
Prof. Kulish, a consultant for Russian pharmaceutical companies, said several vaccine manufacturers had delayed production for months last year while waiting for critical pieces of equipment manufactured in China and having a shortage during the pandemic.
“Unfortunately, Russia does not produce biotechnological equipment at all,” he said, adding that he expects production to increase from this month.
But it has yet to be seen. At one site delivering a vaccine under contract this week by a company outside St. Petersburg, bottles of Sputnik vaccine rolled off a production line, each containing five doses and potentially saving lives.
Yet scaling up outputs was a challenge. “It’s a very volatile technology,” said Dmitry Morozov, the company’s CEO, Biocad. His company received the contract in September and began manufacturing only 1.8 million two-dose kits in February – far from the hundreds of millions the Kremlin had promised foreign buyers.
Mr. Morozov said his factory has the ability to make twice as much vaccine. But the vaccine contracts are so burdensome that he loses money with the production, which forced him last fall to discuss half of his ability for a lucrative cancer medication. He has since added additional vaccine lines.
In the longer term, Russia is looking for foreign producers to expand production and sign agreements with companies in India, South Korea and China. But it looks like the companies are months away from producing the vaccine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov said last month that future overseas production would meet foreign demand, avoiding home shortages.
For now, Russian doctors serving overcrowded Covid-19 wards are complaining that they had to keep working without being offered the vaccine. Yuri Korovin, a 62-year-old surgeon in the Novgorod region northwest of Moscow, was never offered a dose until he fell ill in late December.
“Of course you can not forget about your own people,” he said during a telephone interview about the export, still coughing and panting.