MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Tuesday that pressure on some countries to refuse to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 was at unprecedented levels, but had no chance of success.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the remarks when asked to comment on a U.S. government report that appeared to show that the United States had tried to dissuade Brazil from buying Sputnik V.
The report, posted on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website, detailed the work of the U.S. Office of Global Affairs (OGA) in the fight against malignant influences in the Americas. “.
The report described the agency’s diplomatic efforts to counter what it described as attempts by countries, including Russia, to increase its influence in the region, to the detriment of US security and safety.
“Examples include the use of OGA’s Health Attache office to convince Brazil to reject the Russian vaccine COVID-19,” the government report said.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov declined to make specific comments on the report, but said Russia was against politicizing the situation around vaccines.
“In many countries, the pressure scale is unprecedented … these selfish attempts to force countries to give up any vaccine have no prospects,” he said.
“We believe there should be as many doses of vaccines as possible so that all countries, including the poorest, have a chance to stop the pandemic,” Peskov said.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow forwarded a request for comment to the U.S. Department of State. The department did not respond immediately.
Reports by Dmitry Antonov; writing by Alexander Marrow and Polina Ivanova; edited by Andrew Osborn and Philippa Fletcher