ST. PETERSBURG, June 4. /TASS/. Russia can see political overtones in the fact that the European Union has not approved the use of Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine yet, Yevgeny Primakov, head of the Russian Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation, said on Friday at the session titled ‘Russia-Germany Relations after the Pandemic: Together or Apart?’ at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

"It goes without saying that originally there was no politics in the Sputnik V story, but it has surfaced there. It has not come from us. Let’s ponder over that. It is the first vaccine that was developed and that was tested. But almost all the vaccines that appeared later - the main AstraZeneca, Pfizer and others - have been blessed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and European bodies, but the first [vaccine] that was invented and offered for the market, has not been accepted yet. It is obviously an odd situation in which we can see political overtones for absolutely understandable reasons," he said.

Primakov pointed out that for Russia, the vaccine is a way to save lives. He added that Russia would like the Sputnik V issue to be clarified.

Russia was the world’s first nation to register its coronavirus vaccine on August 11, 2020. The vaccine was named Sputnik V. Russia submitted applications for Sputnik V approval to the European Union and to the World Health Organization (WHO). To date, the Russian vaccine has been approved for use by over 60 counties with a cumulative population of over 1.5 billion. More than 30 countries have started mass vaccination with Sputnik V. Its 91.6% efficacy was confirmed by the publication of data in The Lancet, a world-acclaimed medical journal. On March 4, the European Medicines Agency announced that it had started a rolling review of Sputnik V.