Sputnik or AstraZeneca? The choice is often geopolitical, being fuelled intensely by global promotion campaigns or propaganda, as some would say. The race of the vaccine reveals big rivalries and tests the fragile international partnerships. In the third episode of the podcast “This is how things stand!”, produced by the sic! team, Eugen Muravschi and Victoria Coroban discussed how the pandemic affected the international relations, primarily in Eastern Europe, with Sorin Ioniță, president of the think tank Expert-Forum of Bucharest, and Dorina Baltag, doctor of political sciences specialized in EU diplomacy at the London Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance, IPN reports.
The podcast says Russia intensely promoted the Sputnik V vaccine, including by fake news and disinformation that discredited the Western vaccines. The secondary effect is that the people’s confidence in all vaccines decreased, including in Sputnik V, even inside Russia. The EU moved slower and failed in parts, for example in the talks with AstraZeneca, but instead provided with vaccines countries poorer than Romania, which would have been unable to compete on the free market with wealthier states, such as Germany.
Dorina Baltag said Russia is trying to undermine the common anti-COVID-19 efforts of the EU, where solidarity and unity remain sensitive issues and Russia is not alone in this regard. “The fact that China also offered Hungary vaccines points to competition between Russia and China to see which of them has greater power, in what parts of the world, while the EU, being the third largest economic market, is important both for China and for Russia,” she stated.
Both Sorin Ioniță and Dorina Baltag noted that the health policy in the EU is not centralized in Brussels and is left to the discretion of the national governments. “The health policy is not a national policy. If we, Romania, had acted like the Brits, we wouldn’t have been scolded by the Commission. But we do not have Oxford or Cambridge or their health system, or the NHS, or their microbiological research tradition. We have the Cantacuzino Institute that has a lock on its door and that grows weeds in its yard in the middle of Bucharest,” stated Ioniță.
Moldova, as always, is caught in the middle of the competition between the West and the East, which intensified during the pandemic and involves four big international payers: the EU, Russia, China and the U.S. Moldova clearly needs assistance and honest assistance can come only from the West, from the European Union, the WHO and the Global Vaccine Action Plan, said Sorin Ioniță.
The results are seen in practice: while some of the Gamaleya Institute are working together with those from AstraZeneca on a combined vaccine, some of the doctors in Moldova refuse the Western vaccine and prefer to wait for the Russian Sputnik.
The full podcast can be listened to online. The project is financed with a grant provided by Soros Foundation Moldova from the reserve fund “Phase II COVID-19 Response” to support Moldova in containing the pandemic.
