ST. PETERSBURG, Russia – In its foreign policy, Russia tends to favor the hard power of military might and oil and gas exports. But in the past few months, the Kremlin has won a major diplomatic victory from an unexpected source: the success of its coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V.
Although the United States and European countries have considered or implemented bans on vaccine exports, Russia has received applause for sharing its vaccine with countries around the world in an apparent act of enlightened self-interest.
So far, more than 50 countries, from Latin America to Asia, have ordered 1.2 billion doses of the Russian vaccine, improving the image of Russian science and increasing Moscow’s influence around 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 would like the world to think. While Sputnik V is unquestionably effective, production is lagging behind, raising questions about whether Moscow may be promising far more vaccine exports than it can supply, and doing so 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 Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow. However, Russian authorities are bragging about massive vaccine exports and reveling in the warm glow of the vaccine diplomacy it has generated.
“Soft power is the gaping hole in Russia’s global status,” said Cliff Kupchan, president of risk consultancy Eurasia Group and a former American diplomat, in a telephone interview. “If they play their cards here, vaccines can be very important.”
European officials have begun to react to Russia’s aggressive marketing of Sputnik.
“We still wonder why Russia is theoretically offering millions and millions of doses, although it does not advance enough in vaccinating its own people,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at a news conference on Wednesday market. “This question must be answered.”
Despite doubts, vaccine diplomacy has already promoted a number of goals for Moscow: it helped deepen divisions within the European Union, sending a shipment to Hungary before regulators approved it for the entire bloc; generated domestic discord in Ukraine, highlighting the slow supply of western vaccines to the country; and disseminated misinformation in Latin America that undermined public confidence in vaccines made in the United States.
“We are ready to put gas pipelines and supply cheap energy, we can sell weapons and now we have this other dimension, this soft power: we are ready to offer the vaccine,” said Andrey V. Kortunov, chairman of the Russian Council on International Affairs, a group non-governmental organization that analyzes Russian foreign policy.
Despising its critics, the Kremlin took every opportunity to highlight its exports, some of them quite insignificant.
A supply of enough vaccine for 10,000 people, for example, arrived in Bolivia last month with the pomp normally reserved for state visits – greeted at the airport by the country’s president, Luis Arce, and the Russian ambassador.
“We congratulate the brother people of Bolivia on a qualitatively new level in the fight against the coronavirus,” said the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement.
“Sputnik is entering new orbits,” announced a report on state television this month, proudly showing boxes with thousands of doses of vaccine being loaded onto a plane departing from Russia to Argentina.
In Russia, at least until now, there has been little effect on exports, although by the end of 2020 it had the third highest number of surplus deaths in the world, after the United States and Brazil.
Only 2.2 million Russians (less than 2%) received the first dose of the double vaccine. In the United States, on the other hand, 40.3 million people (about 12%) received their first injections, despite a difficult implantation.
The reason for this lack of public acceptance, analysts say, is that many Russians are so suspicious of their own government that they reject clinical trials that have shown Sputnik V to be safe and highly effective. In a survey conducted last fall, 59% of Russians said they did not intend to be vaccinated.
The distrust is so deep that the fully-stocked vaccination sites in Moscow are often empty. The fears were not helped by the example of President Vladimir V. Putin, who has not yet taken the vaccine himself.
“If the massive demand for vaccination arises, colliding with the shortage of drugs due to exports, then it could become a political problem,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, associate researcher at Chatham House, a London-based research institute, on the use of the vaccine in foreign policy. “Now, everyone who wants to get a vaccine can get it, so it is a source of pride that Russia was one of the first to have a vaccine and that we help others too.”
It is unclear how long this situation will last, given the problems of vaccine production, which are somewhat emblematic of Russia’s general economic problems, stemming largely from state control.
The vaccine license is controlled by two state institutions, a research institute and a sovereign wealth fund. They closed export and production deals, while seven private pharmaceutical factories manufacture most of the vaccine under contracts that provide 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 months last year, while waiting for critical pieces of equipment made in China and which were in short supply during the pandemic.
“Unfortunately, Russia does not produce any biotechnological equipment,” he said, adding that he expects an increase in production starting this month.
But that remains to be seen. At a vaccine production site under contract with a company outside of St. Petersburg this week, vials of Sputnik vaccine came off a production line, each containing five doses and the potential to save lives.
However, sizing production has been a challenge. “It is a very capricious technology,” said Dmitri Morozov, the company’s chief executive, Biocad. His company received the contract in September and, in early February, had produced just 1.8 million sets of two doses – a far cry from the hundreds of millions promised by the Kremlin to foreign buyers.
Morozov said his factory has the capacity to produce twice the vaccine. But vaccine contracts are so costly that he loses money on production, forcing him to reserve half of his capacity for a lucrative cancer drug. He has since added other vaccine lines.
In the long term, Russia is seeking foreign producers to expand production, signing agreements with companies in India, South Korea and China. But these companies appear to be months away from producing the vaccine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said last month that future production abroad will meet foreign demand, avoiding domestic shortages.
For now, Russian doctors who care for Covid-19 overflowing wards complain that they had to continue working without receiving the vaccine. Yuri Korovin, a 62-year-old surgeon from the Novgorod region, northwest of Moscow, never received a dose before falling ill in late December.
“Of course, you can’t forget your own people,” he said of exports, still coughing and hissing, in a telephone interview.