KIEV, January 12. /TASS/. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has stated that he is against the use of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus due to a "propaganda effect."

"I would like to state clearly that the propaganda capabilities of Sputnik V surpass by far its actual capabilities and effectiveness. <...> As a member of the government, I would be against this decision. Because Russia doesn’t care about the health of Ukrainians, it cares about imposing its propaganda cliches and ideology by means of supplying the vaccine even if it was effective," he told the Ukrainian 1+1 TV channel on Tuesday.

"There is a factor which is much more important from the point of view of Russia’s interests than the medical one. It’s the propaganda factor," the Ukrainian top diplomat asserted.

Last week, the Ukrainian Health Ministry stated that it is impossible to register Sputnik V in the country before the end of Phase Three of clinical trials. At the same time, head of the Political Council of the Opposition Platform - For Life party Viktor Medvedchuk stated that this stance has nothing to do neither with medicine, nor with interests of Ukrainian citizens. Earlier, he reported that the Biolec pharmaceutical company in Kharkov had submitted paperwork to the authorities for state registration of Sputnik V including its production in the country and inoculation of residents.

At the same time, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal reported that Kiev is conducting talks with all vaccine manufacturers worldwide except for the Russian ones. In his turn, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky stated that the country will soon launch a large-scale inoculation thanks to vaccine supplies from China. On December 30, it became known that Kiev concluded a contract to obtain over 1.9 mln doses of the preparation produced by Chinese Sinovac Biotech with the first batch of 700,000 doses expected in February.