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Slovak Foreign Minister’s remarks on Sputnik V vaccine undignified, Russian diplomat says

Maria Zakharova reiterated that deliveries of the Russian vaccine to Slovakia began on the basis of a request by the country’s government
Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic
Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok
© AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic

MOSCOW, March 4. /TASS/. Statements by Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok that the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus is an instrument of a hybrid war are undignified, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Thursday.

"These statements are undignified in the current global situation due to the pandemic. This statements look odd, and sometimes, it seems to me, even outrageous, because now one should focus on how to overcome difficulties and certainly not to create new ones by such statements," she said.

The spokeswoman reiterated that deliveries of the Russian vaccine to Slovakia began on the basis of a request by the country’s government. "This is not smuggling, not counterfeit, not a violation of some norms, this is the government’s request," she stated.

On March 2, the Slovak top diplomat criticized the fact that the country’s prime minister personally greeted the first batch of Sputnik V delivered by a special flight of the National Air Force from Moscow to an airport of an eastern Slovakian city of Kosice. He called Sputnik V "a political instrument" which "divides residents of Slovakia at home, residents of Western countries abroad." With the aid of this instrument, he continued, "the European Union appears as something suffering a setback."