Ukraine's Politician Medvedchuk Says Kiev Rejects Russia's Sputnik V Vaccine To Please US

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th February, 2021) Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk expressed the belief that Kiev was rejecting the purchase of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 in order to please the United States � and also because it was exactly Medvedchuk who reached agreement with Moscow on the supplies.

"When [Ukrainian] Health Minister [Maksym] Stepanov said ... last fall that we would consider all vaccines, including a Russian one, he was invited to the US embassy. When he was leaving the embassy together with the acting US ambassador, it was not him, Stepanov, but her, the US' representative in Ukraine, who announced that Ukraine would not purchase the Russian vaccine," Medvedchuk, who heads the political council of the Opposition Platform � For Life party, said in an interview with RT's Braty (Brothers) program.

Medvedchuk, who held a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin back in October, recalled that Putin agreed to supply the vaccine to Ukraine at the negotiations.

"He said that official agencies should certainly establish [contact], and that 'we are ready to provide Sputnik V vaccine already today' ... A month passed. But how could the Kiev authorities, headed by an insolent person who groundlessly fancies himself head of state, accept such an offer, given that it was an opposition leader Medvedchuk who reached agreement!" the politician noted.

Even though "neither Moderna, nor Pfizer/BioNTech, nor Astrazeneca vaccines completed phase 3 clinical trials, they [Kiev] started saying we cannot not accept the Russian [vaccine] as it is not efficient," Medvedchuk recalled.

"This means, the crazy talk produced by Zelenskyy, his health minister and representatives of Ukraine's political elite is meant against the interests of the people," Medvedchuk stressed.