MOSCOW, June 11. /TASS/. The government of Sierra Leone has received the approval of the Russian Foreign Ministry in response to their request on the delivery of Sputnik V. The country expects the first batches of the vaccine to arrive over the next few weeks, Sierra Leone’s Ambassador to Moscow Mohamed Yongawo told TASS on Friday.
"Russia gave us quite a large number of [COVID-19] test kits, 10,000 test kits," he said. "At this point in time, Sierra Leone has approached Russia for the Sputnik vaccine, and we are waiting for the response of the Russian government with regards to the Sputnik vaccine." "But we had favorable information from the Minister of Foreign Affairs [of Russia] Mr. Sergey Lavrov. So we hope that in the next few weeks, <…> Sierra Leone will receive the Sputnik V vaccine from Russia," the ambassador added.
He noted that Russia helped Sierra Leone combat outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as Ebola. "Russia has a very excellent relationship with Sierra Leone. That was evidenced by the visit of our president (Julius Maada Bio — TASS) to Sochi in October (2019 — TASS) for the Africa-Russia summit, and that is evidenced by the visit of high-level delegations from Sierra Leone to Russia. Particularly, in the last two weeks, we had a visit of the foreign minister (David Francis — TASS) to Russia. And our country, our president highly value the relationship between Sierra Leone and Russia," he stated.