Comment by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in connection with the scandal involving EU’s COVID-19 vaccine purchases

We took notice of yet another article following the scandal with the EU’s coronavirus vaccine purchases. With the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, refusing to provide information about deals with Pfizer and her role in them, evidence of corruption and destruction of documents, the authors of the article write, have been submitted for consideration by the court.

During three years of the pandemic, which called for combined efforts of the international community, the EU countries were selfishly saving the lives of the golden billion and protecting the interests of their pharmaceutical industry. This fraud cost hundreds of millions in wasted money and millions in lost lives in countries that were unable to receive timely help.

It should not be forgotten that the so-called impeccable standards promoted by these, as we now know, corrupt European officials underlie, among other things, the system for fast-track prequalification of the WHO's drugs. The biased approach of these people prevented the Russian Sputnik V vaccine from ever being prequalified. As it turned our later, its quality was higher than that of Western vaccines. Because of that, people in many countries of the Global South were unable to get timely access to preventive and medical care.

Brussels is now trying to entrench its essentially failed vaccine purchase and distribution arrangements, such as ACT-A and COVAX, as an internationally accepted practice. This scandal has once again shown the true face of the European bureaucracy, which imposes its narrow self-serving goals and the double standards of such mechanisms on international organisations.