MOSCOW, March 12. /TASS/. The US and its allies plan a large-scale smear campaign aimed at discrediting Russian anti-Covid products amid rising demand for the Sputnik V vaccine, a high-level Kremlin source told TASS Friday.

"According to our intelligence agencies, the US and its allies intend to arrange a large-scale disinformation campaign, aimed at fueling a biased attitude against our scientific innovations in fighting the spread of coronavirus infections as demand grows for the Russian Sputnik V vaccine across the world, including in European countries," the source said.

US actions aimed to discredit Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine are an attempt to diminish the contribution of Russian science to the global fight against COVID-19, the source said.

"Such actions of the US and its allies demonstrate their attempts to diminish the contribution of Russian science to the global fight against the spread of COVID-19, to undermine the trust of the international community in our research developments and hinder their certification by the World Health Organization, as well as to lower foreign demand for the Sputnik V vaccine, which is ranked second on the number of countries that approved it," the source said.

The campaign will target those European nations that have registered Russia’s Sputnik V anti-coronavirus vaccine, according to the source.

"European countries that authorized the Russian Sputnik V vaccine for emergency use have been chosen as a target of the anti-Russian information campaign. They are Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Montenegro, San Marino, and North Macedonia," the source said, citing the data from Russia’s security and intelligence service indicating that the United States and its allies plan to unleash an information campaign to form biased attitudes to Russian anti-COVID developments.

According to the source, the West is gearing up for a scenario for a smear campaign attack on Sputnik V by faking mass deaths after its alleged use.

"A scenario of information attack on Sputnik V is being prepared through controlled non-governmental organizations (the US Agency for International Development, Soros’ foundation, Thomson Reuters Foundation) and media structures (BBC, Reuters, Internews). [The attack] aims to substantiate the promoted theses about "the vaccine’s inefficiency and danger’ by faking mass deaths allegedly caused by the use of the medicine," he said.

The US is aggressively promoting the Pfizer vaccine, imposing exploitative terms on buyer countries through “bullying” at the highest level, the source told TASS.

"The US is engaged in an unprecedentedly aggressive policy of promoting its Pfizer vaccine, seeking not only to waive all monetary compensation in case of side effects, but all the monetary responsibility for the producer’s negligence, including manufacturing defects and violations of storage conditions,” the source revealed.

According to the source, the US imposes exploitative terms on vaccine buyer countries. In particular, this was the case with Argentina. Initially, this Latin American country agreed to Washington’s terms, but later refused to sign the contract, after receiving new demands to guarantee expenses coverage, slamming the US tactic as being "held to ransom” and “high-level bullying,” the source said.

"According to the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Argentina initially agreed to these exploitative terms, but the US later rolled out new demands to provide sovereign guarantees of coverage of expenses, using state assets, including federal bank reserves, diplomatic mission buildings and even military bases as collateral,” the source said.