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Yuri Gribkov, Russia’s consul general in Estonia, admitted to getting the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine.
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He had his second chance three days before the end of his term and was due to return to Moscow.
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Russia has been looking for months to discredit the Pfizer vaccine and has defended its homemade Sputnik V.
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A leading Russian diplomat admitted to having received the Pfizer vaccine, avoiding the injection of Sputnik V developed by his own country.
Yuri Gribkov, who is Russia’s consul general in Estonia, was confronted by a reporter from the Estonian news outlet Delfi on Wednesday as he left a hospital in Ida-Viru, an Estonian city located 51 kilometers from the Russian border.
Gribkov’s term as consul general ends on Friday. He visited the hospital shortly after noon on Wednesday for what was his second injection of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine, Delfi reported.
When confronted by the reporter, Gribkov confirmed that he had just received the second dose, according to a video of the interaction published by The Daily Beast, who worked with Delfi on the investigation.
“Pfizer?” the reporter is heard asking. “Yes,” replied Gribkov.
Russia approved the Sputnik V vaccine, developed by the Moscow Gamaleya Research Institute, for emergency use in August 2020, and started vaccinating citizens on December 7.
Approval for emergency use came before the vaccine completed phase 3 tests, and many ordinary Russians expressed doubts about its effectiveness.
But Gribvok told The Daily Beast that he did not wait to be vaccinated until he returned to Russia because his doctor in Estonia diagnosed him with “very weak lungs”.
“The Russian embassy, like other foreign embassies, received a diplomatic note from the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the suggestion to have [diplomats] vaccinated, “said Gribkov.
Despite this, the footage is likely to raise embarrassing questions for Gribkov on his return to Russia, as Moscow has not approved any other vaccines.
Insider contacted the Russian Presidential Press Office for comment.
Pro-Kremlin media have been trying to tarnish the reputation of non-Russian vaccines such as Pfizer for months.
The media are trying to create the image that “Russia fights the pandemic more effectively than Western democracies, increasing the credibility of a Russian vaccine and undermining that of others [Western] vaccines, “according to the EUvsDisinfo campaign funded by the European Union.
Several state-run media have even labeled the Pfizer vaccine as “the kill shot,” said EUvsDisinfo.
One was Tsargrad TV, owned by an oligarch ally of President Vladimir Putin, who on January 15 published eight articles that called the Pfizer vaccine a “deadly shot”, the Daily Beast said.
Gribkov told the Daily Beast that he denied that Russian government officials have internally labeled the Pfizer shot as deadly.
“None of my colleagues, who I have known for a long time, said it was a ‘deadly shot’,” he said.
Read More: Vaccine inequity on Capitol Hill: members of Congress get vaccines, but essential Hill workers are waiting
Pfizer announced that its vaccine was 90% effective on November 9, 2020. In an apparent attempt to steal the spotlight, the Russian Ministry of Health announced later that day that Sputnik V was also 90% effective.
Pro-Kremlin misinformation networks have also tried to cast doubt on the effectiveness of Pfizer’s shot on social media, according to a December 2020 report by the European Union Delegation in Azerbaijan.
The allegations included that Pfizer used “fake clinical trials” and delayed news about the vaccine’s effectiveness “to get rid of Trump.” Former President Donald Trump also made the last statement, accusing Pfizer of deliberately withholding vaccine test results until after election day.
Russia has not approved the Pfizer vaccine, but the company is considering seeking approval, according to state news agency TASS.
Russian state media have also been working to eliminate a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, calling it “the monkey vaccine” because it has been extensively tested on monkeys.
“Western vaccine developers are openly ridiculed in the state-controlled Russian polyglot media, which in some cases has led to absurd claims that vaccines will turn people into monkeys,” wrote Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, in a post blog in December.
However, Russia announced in December that it was working with AstraZeneca to explore whether the two vaccines could be combined.
The fact that Gribkov managed to get two doses of the vaccine when most Estonians had not yet had their first injections was not well received at Ida-Viru Central Hospital, which opened an investigation.
“I can’t think of any regulations that would have allowed something like this to happen,” Tarmo Bakler, the hospital administrator, told The Daily Beast.
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