Western Outlets Praise Russian Vaccine; Russian Outlets Trash Western Ones

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 6 – Many Western media outlets praised Russia’s Sputnik-5 vaccine, with Bloomberg calling it “the greatest scientific breakthrough since Soviet times” after The Lancet published figures from the last phase of its testing. Russian media picked up on this in self-congratulation (lenta.ru/news/2021/02/06/breakthrough/).

            But some Russian portals also gave prominent coverage to reports in The New York Times that Moscow has been trashing Western vaccines and spreading disinformation about them, something that has long been the case in Russian media directed both at a domestic audience and at foreign ones (echo.msk.ru/news/2786244-echo.html).

            Moscow’s attacks on Western vaccines for the former are clearly intended to signal to the Russian population what the Kremlin sees as another indication of Russian superiority and source of pride. Its attacks on Western medications for foreign audiences sends a similar message but also is intended to boost interest in and sales of the Russian vaccine there.

            Today, Russian officials reported 16,627 new cases of infection and 497 new deaths from the coronavirus (t.me/COVID2019_official/2448), with most regions showing improvement but some still at a plateau or getting worse (regnum.ru/news/society/3182472.html). Because of that, the Moscow Patriarchate said it will keep its sanitary restrictions in place (credo.press/235640/).

            Despite recent easing of the pandemic, some Russian virologists, like Sergey Netesov of Novosibirsk State University, say that if new strains of the virus penetrate Russia, they may spread more rapidly and inflict more losses than the original one (versia.ru/virusolog-ukazal-na-osobennosti-tretej-volny-koronavirusa-v-rossii).

            One nation, partially within the borders of the Russian Federation, which has been hit particularly hard is the Circassian community. Its efforts to arrange for Circassians in the Middle East to return to the homeland, in the first instance, the Adygey Republic, have been stymied by the pandemic (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/359482/).

            Many borders have been shut and Moscow has invoked the pandemic to justify limiting the influx of Circassians out of fears that if too many of them return that could upset the ethnic balance in the North Caucasus. But the pandemic has had one important consequence for the future as far as returns are concerned.

            Adygey officials say that they are now focused on finding Circassians with specific skill sets such as medicine and teaching in order to fill in for aging doctors and teachers in rural parts of the republic. That could mean that when pandemic restrictions are lifted, more such professionals will be among the first to be able to return.