Putin battles to sell Russian Covid-19 vaccine amid new rift with the west

President Vladimir Putin has pushed the inoculation in calls with other world leaders since touting Russia's approval of Sputnik V in August as the globe's first Covid-19 vaccine

Russia is accusing the West of maligning its achievements in the global race to defeat Covid-19 as its attempts to win key markets for its Sputnik V vaccine run up against the demands of regulators.

“We understand the game,” Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive officer of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which backed Sputnik V’s development and negotiates its international roll-out, said in an interview. “It’s a combination of some misunderstanding, some strong bias and, really, some very strong efforts to undermine the Russian vaccine.”

Like neighboring China, which is struggling to reassure nations testing its vaccines, Russia’s drive to convert what it