MOSCOW, March 13. /TASS/. The West has not yet stopped its information campaign against the Russian coronavirus vaccine, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday aired by YouTube channel Solovyev Live.

"It is evident that the campaign against our vaccine has been ongoing for many months. The backbone of that information hydra was broken by Westerners, by the way, after they had either rolled out vaccination with the Russian vaccine or started asking for its deliveries, or started calling for joint production on their territories. But it does not mean that this smear information campaign is over. It is not over yet," Zakharova said.

Apart from that, she noted the Western countries’ determination amid the problems caused by the pandemic to somehow shape "aversion to everything Russia does" among their people.

Zakharova mentioned a mechanism of provocations, which the West had been practicing in recent years, including against Russia.

"They have twice within three years performed a stunt called provocations with the use of alleged chemical weapons against our country. And in regard to Syria, how many times has it happened? Naturally, there is no proof. On the contrary, there is evidence proving the opposite that these are provocations and that those provocations were deliberately planned. We are well aware what they have in their arsenal. This instrument and this mechanism, I mean provocative with the use of various methodologies, could be applied to whatever they want. They have been practicing this mechanism over recent years," the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman noted.

Powerless anger

The Western nations’ criticism of Russian-made vaccines against the novel coronavirus comes as a result of their powerless anger, Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. 

"Everything that they [Western nations] say, claim and do is a result of powerless anger," she said. "They have no leg to stand on, they have nothing to say in response."

"Those most civilized countries force their ministers to leave [their posts]. <…> Heads of government are threatened with <…> resignation, heads of states - with impeachment simply because they dared to raise the question: ‘Maybe we should think, for example, about purchasing the Russian vaccine?’" Zakharova said. "At this point, they should be thinking about how to save people, how to take them out of this terrible abyss."

On Friday, a high-ranking Kremlin source told TASS that the West was preparing a scenario of information attack on Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine by faking mass deaths allegedly caused by its use. According to the source, the attack is planned against the backdrop of growing global demand for the Russian vaccine. He noted that the US and its allies were simultaneously planning to circulate "the materials exposing" the incompetence of Russian virologists and immunologists.

The source pointed out that the European countries that authorized the emergency use of Sputnik V had been picked out as the target audience for the anti-Russian information campaign. Among them are Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Montenegro, San Marino and Northern Macedonia.

The official told TASS that the US steps to discredit the Russian vaccine were attempts to denigrate the contribution Russian science had made to global efforts against the coronavirus pandemic.