BELGRADE, May 1. /TASS/. President of Montenegro Milo Dukanovic has given an order to stage an information attack against Russia’s Sputnik V anti-coronavirus vaccine, the country’s In4s news portal said citing an anonymous source.
According to the portal, Dukanovic tasked his closest allies in the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro, who remain in power in the new government, to launch a disinformation campaign against the Russian vaccine.
In4s reported that supporters of Dukanovic, including editor-in-chief of the Portal Analitika website Drasko Duranovic and Head of Pharmacovigilance, Pharmacoepidemiology and Information on Medicines Department at the Institute for Medicines and Medical Devices Veselinka Vukicevic, were tasked with undermining the population’s trust in the Russian vaccine. The report says that officials close to Dukanovic are set to spread false information about negative effects of Sputnik V.
On March 12, 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.
Earlier, several batches of Sputnik V were delivered to Montenegro from Russia and Serbia.