Will Russian COVID-19 Vaccine Labels Be Changed In Belarus?

"Sputnik V" may be passed off as our own vaccine.

Russian political scientist Andrei Suzdaltsev writes about this on the politoboz.com website.

- There are indirect signs that the neighboring countries, among which Russia certainly stands out, do not trust the Belarusian state statistics on coronavirus. In particular, one of the main reasons for refusing to hold the World Hockey Championship in Belarus, along with the political one, was the pandemic situation on the territory of Belarus.

However, Russia acts in the most demonstrative way towards Belarus, not only having introduced special regulations for the entry of Belarusian citizens in Russia, but also strengthening the border with Belarus in every way possible in order to prevent Belarusian smuggling. From time to time, Moscow imposes restrictions on air travel.

The Belarusian authorities take an extremely negative attitude to Russia's attempts to isolate itself from Belarus, and Lukashenka or R. Halouchanka have been regularly raising the issue of lifting Russian restrictions imposed on the Russian-Belarusian border and resuming railway communication between Russia and Belarus at all Russian-Belarusian meetings, which have taken place since April last year.

The January 26 meeting between the prime ministers of Russia and Belarus in Moscow was no exception. Immediately after the talks, the Belarusian media once again published reports of Belarusian "experts" that railway communication would be resumed in the near future, perhaps within the next few weeks. As a reminder, they have been talking about it in Minsk since June of 2020, after January 26, 2021 the Belarusian prime minister R. Halouchanka was already "dreaming" about it: "Due to the fact that the situation has stabilized, I mean with the incidence of Covid-19, thanks to the measures taken, including vaccination, we are coming up with the figures which, in our opinion, allow full restoration of the passenger service".

It is clear that until vaccination has had an effect in Belarus, neither "Minsk-Moscow" train, nor "Moscow-Brest" train, which is so popular among Belarusian guest-workers, are out of the question.

Vaccination in Belarus

Officially vaccination in Belarus began back in December, but its achievements are amazing. As of January 27, there were only 1125 people vaccinated against coronavirus in Belarus. Such a low result is all the more strange, since Belarus was the first country in the world to receive the Russian Sputnik V for free.

Meanwhile, the "consumption" of the vaccine suggests that Belarus did not even finish one box (it is unlikely that Moscow had sent a truck with only one box of vaccine to Minsk).

On the other hand, according to classified information (the author has no confirmation yet), the entire Belarusian establishment has already been vaccinated, although it is not very clear whose vaccine was used.

Officially Belarus is vaccinated only with the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. Moscow in principle does not limit supplies of the vaccine to Belarus and is even ready to share its production technology. Belarus assures that production of Sputnik V will be established in the first quarter of 2021 (at the Belmedpreparaty enterprise), i.e., at best by early April.

There is no hiding it: "All willing Belarusians will be vaccinated against coronavirus in April, so far doctors are being vaccinated, and teachers are next in line".

A question immediately arises: why so long? After all, the Belarusian mass media, including the Belarusian TV, tend to assert it as an axiom that the level of Belarusian medical science and pharmacology is of the world class. Moreover, A. Lukashenka stated that having invested literally dozens of millions of dollars (!), Belarus would very soon produce its own vaccine against COVID - 19, which, we must admit, was sounding fantastic, as the leading countries of the world, including Russia, have invested billions of dollars in the vaccine development.

Still, what is the reason for such a low vaccination rate in Belarus? It is unlikely that the delay is connected with any intrigues of Moscow. The Russian Federation is ready to supply vaccines. Moreover, nearly at the beginning of the above mentioned negotiations of the Russian and Belarusian Prime Ministers M. Mishustin calmed down his Belarusian colleague by saying about urgent shipment of new test systems to Belarus which confirmed the information about the steady shortage of the tests in Belarus.

If there is a problem with tests, what can we say about treatment for coronavirus?

Apparently, having been tracking down the situation with coronavirus and realizing that the population reacts very negatively to all actions of the authorities in this area, the Belarusian authorities started talking about China's readiness to supply its vaccine to Belarus.

Did Minsk become like Kiev, where they did not wait for American vaccines and have already turned to Beijing?

So what is the intrigue?

In fact, A. Lukashenka, concerned about keeping power in his hands, decided to play with the pandemic once again. But if in the first case, in the spring and summer of 2020, no matter how much A. Lukashenka shouted about "psychosis" and treatment with vodka-baths, he got absorbed in playing, which resulted in the formation of a protest vote against him, in the second case - at the turn of 2020-2021, A. Lukashenka decided to use the free Russian technology for producing the Sputnik V vaccine and declare the Russian vaccine a Belarusian one, and to become the "conqueror" of COVID - 19 in the eyes of the Belarusian people for the fourth time.

Meanwhile, it is A. Lukashenka's pandemic policy that became the trigger for a number of trends that were initially extremely negative for the first Belarusian president in the summer of 2020: the steady collapse of Russian-Belarusian integration, including the system of subsidies, the pseudo-social nature of the Belarusian state, the anti-people, fascist nature of Belarusian statehood, the tiredness of the population from the irremovability of one person in power, the closed political system, the lack of prospects for the development of the country under A. Lukashenka. , etc. As a result, these trends gave birth to the phenomenon of anti-Lukashenka voting, which results have not been recognized by the Belarusian authorities and mass media until now.

Thus,

A. Lukashenka has always been famous for his astonishing ability not only to learn from his own mistakes, but never to admit them. A. Lukashenka sees in his own people the main enemy of his power and simply sacrifices the citizens of his own country in favor of his new fantastic version - to change the labels on the Russian vaccine and immediately become a world leader, taking the lead in the fight against the deadly pandemic. It is clear that A. Lukashenka hopes for something: against the background of such a stolen "success" with the "Belarusian" vaccine, nobody will remember about the rigged presidential election of August 9, 2020.