What has hundreds of thousands of social media followers, a catchy name and the capacity to win hearts and minds in Europe? The answer is a word that conjures up old superpower rivalries and the launch of the world’s first satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957: Sputnik.
What was once a Soviet triumph in space is now a Covid vaccine and a source of Russian pride. It is also a tool for widening rifts in Europe over the EU’s disastrously slow introduction of vaccines and doubts over AstraZeneca’s jab.
Russia is promoting its Sputnik V vaccine around Europe — and in the rest of the world — with the same enthusiasm it brings to Eurovision song contests. On social media it has engineered excitement with the offer of free trips to Russia, Sputnik jabs included.
It is appealing directly to Europeans frustrated over their inability to get vaccinated at home. “Have you entered our competition yet?” goes one message on Sputnik’s Instagram account urging followers to send in photographs of themselves doing a “V for victory” sign. “You can win a summer trip to Russia!”
Followers are promised that they will be the first to receive invitations to Russia for a Sputnik jab under a new vaccine tourism scheme.
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“I would definitely like to come, it’s going to take for ever [to get vaccinated] in Germany,” one Sputnik follower commented. It is impossible to know if such comments are genuine. Bret Schafer, a digital disinformation expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, is suspicious.
“They’ve invested heavily in this Sputnik campaign,” he said, adding that the Sputnik Twitter account had increased its followers by 600 per cent in the first three months of this year to more than 250,000. “Whether the followers are authentic or not is an open question. It may be bot-driven,” he added, referring to “infobots” used in previous Russian campaigns. “It’s always a possibility when you’re dealing with Russia.”
The campaign appears to be bearing fruit, however, as the EU’s procurement policy evaporates and countries go their own way in search of vaccine doses: Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister, told his European counterparts on Wednesday that Berlin would negotiate with Russia to buy Sputnik jabs even though the European medicines regulator has yet to approve them.
Bavaria’s state premier, Markus Söder, said that his region was already talking to Russian producers about buying 2.5 million doses. Austria wants to order a million. San Marino, the autonomous hilltop republic in northern Italy, has taken delivery of 7,000 doses. Not to be outdone, Italy has discussed manufacturing the Russian vaccine.
In some countries Sputnik has prompted political battles. The prime minister of Slovakia, Igor Matovic, was forced to resign in a revolt over his purchase of two million doses. In the neighbouring Czech Republic, however, Sputnik has triumphed: President Milos Zeman, an ally of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, last week sacked his health minister, Jan Blatny, who had refused to support a deal over Sputnik.
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While eager to vaccinate the rest of the world, Putin, 68, has shown little interest thus far in promoting Sputnik at home. Only about 6 per cent of the population have been vaccinated and, according to one recent poll, 62 per cent of Russians are opposed to having the jab.
When Putin had his first inoculation last month it was behind closed doors: when asked why he had not followed the example of other world leaders who have been filmed, he said he had not wanted to be a “performing monkey”.
Russia experts say that Moscow sees the vaccine more as a tool for spreading influence overseas than protecting its people. “The Kremlin is playing a long game, interested only in spreading chaos and divisions in Europe and undermining the credibility of democracies in general,” said Jakub Kalensky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which tracks state-backed disinformation. “I think it would be wise to be sceptical.”
Joanna Hosa of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, said: “Ideally vaccines would be apolitical, but they have been politicised from the start, particularly by Russia and not least of all in the name it chose for its vaccine.”
Putin’s approval of Sputnik for use last August prompted outpourings of national pride. “Americans were surprised when they heard [the satellite] Sputnik’s beeping — it’s the same with this vaccine, Russia will have got there first,” Kirill Dmitriev, head of the investment fund behind the vaccine, told CNN.
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A Russian TV anchor proclaimed: “Just like 60 or so years ago, headlines around the world again feature the Russian word Sputnik.”
Social media posts about Sputnik regularly feature positive reports, including one in The Lancet suggesting it was 90 per cent effective, and show a map of all the countries using it: several are in Latin America, where Russia’s success in selling the vaccine may have a lasting geopolitical effect in a region until now reliant on America.
“No other vaccine producer expends so much effort on social media,” Hosa added. “It shows how much it matters to them. They use it to build up their international credibility and prestige. They are saying it’s not us who need the EU — the EU needs Sputnik.”
In the best traditions of the Cold War, Russia has been accused of spreading disinformation about other vaccines — in particular Pfizer, seen as the main rival. It also takes potshots at European officials who have dared to criticise the Russian jab.
One was Christa Wirthumer-Hoche, chairwoman of the European Medicines Agency, which was evaluating Sputnik’s effectiveness last week while trying to determine whether Russian producers had followed European clinical trial guidelines. Last month she warned European countries against granting emergency authorisation of Sputnik before her organisation had given approval, saying it would be “comparable to Russian roulette”. The Kremlin dismissed this as part of a western plot to undermine Sputnik.
