MOSCOW, December 11. /TASS/. Global pharmaceutical companies are using disreputable methods to undermine Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

"These aspirations [to discredit the Russian vaccine] are seen not only in the Kremlin. They are visible to the naked eye, as they say," he insisted. According to Peskov, "competition is fierce." "It is good when this competition is fair, and for that matter there shouldn’t be much competition in this market," he stressed. He noted that "this is a whole different ballgame since competition here is being politicized, and dirty tricks are being used to discredit the vaccine."

Peskov stressed that Russia’s first coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V was "reliable, good and eagerly sought after." "Some countries and their large pharmaceutical companies indeed stoop to disreputable methods at times in order to prevent the appearance of our vaccine in various countries, and this is well known," the Kremlin spokesman emphasized.

He declined to specify who exactly was using such methods, explaining that it would be enough to read some recent news reports.

Earlier on Friday, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that a smear campaign against the Russian COVID-19 vaccine bankrolled from abroad was in progress. According to Konashenkov, "a series of pseudo-analytical investigations" and false "eyewitness" testimony about the alleged danger of the Russian vaccine or rejection of the vaccination, including in the Russian Armed Forces, is being spun along social networks and Russian-language Internet resources funded by foreign grants.

Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine

On August 11, Sputnik V registered by Russia became the world’s first coronavirus vaccine. The vaccine was developed by the Gamaleya National Research Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology. Its post-registration trials began in Moscow on September 7, with volunteers receiving the first vaccine on September 9. A total of 40,000 people are involved in the program, 10,000 of them have received a placebo instead of the anti-COVID jab.

Based on interim research results, the effectiveness of the Sputnik V vaccine exceeds 95% on the 42nd day after the first dose, provided that a patient gets the second dose.