New Slovak PM seeks to mollify Russia in vaccine row, Hungary helps

Slovakia’s new prime minister sought to defuse a row with Russia over a COVID-19 vaccine shipment on Friday, saying it was in Slovakia’s interest to secure the Russian Sputnik V vaccine after Moscow angrily accused it of contract violations.

Slovakia ordered 2 million doses of Sputnik V from Russia, of which 200,000 arrived on March 1. The deal caused an uproar, having been brokered by the then Prime Minister Igor Matovic without informing his coalition partners, who

opposed using Sputnik V in Slovakia for lacking EU regulator approval.

Matovic was forced to leave his post, but the government’s troubles grew worse when a Slovak watchdog said this week it did not receive sufficient data to asses the Sputnik V doses in the first shipment and said they differed from those reviewed by international scientists and regulators.

In response, Moscow accused the regulator of spreading “fake news” and called on Slovakia to return the doses delivered so far.

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Eduard Heger, who took over as prime minister from Matovic last week, tried to get the deal back on track in a statement published by his office on Friday. “Prime Minister Eduard Heger has eminent interest in mass vaccination of citizens, a condition for attaining collective immunity,” Heger’s office said in a statement.

“He also sees the interest of citizens getting inoculated with the Sputnik V vaccine. Therefore, it is the state’s obligation to secure this vaccine in the required quantity and quality.”