France accuses UK, Russia over coronavirus vaccine

Gulf Today Report

France's foreign minister on Friday accused Britain of "blackmail" against the European Union, saying the UK was under pressure because it lacked doses for second vaccine shots.

"You can't be playing like this, a bit of blackmail, just because you hurried to get people vaccinated with a first shot, and now you're a bit handicapped because you don't have the second one," Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Info radio, according to AFP.

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The latest EU-UK row is about an AstraZeneca plant in the Netherlands, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government claims as part of the British vaccine supply chain.

France's foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian accuses Britain of "blackmail" against the European Union. File photo

Meanwhile, France on Friday accused Russia of using its Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine as a tool to spread Moscow's influence and message rather than as way to fight the global health crisis.

"In terms of how it is managed, it (the Sputnik V vaccine) is more a means of propaganda and aggressive diplomacy than a means of solidarity and health aid," Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Info radio.

The Russian vaccine has come under much criticism in Western countries, while President Vladimir Putin -- who got a Sputnik jab himself on Tuesday -- has dismissed the scepticism as "strange".

Le Drian said both Russia and China were using their vaccines to gain influence abroad "even before vaccinating their own populations".

The minister said Russia had announced "with a lot of media attention" that it would deliver 30,000 vaccine doses to Tunisia.

But the UN-backed Covax initiative had already delivered 100,000 doses to the north African country, with 400,000 more to come by May, he said.

France accuses Russia of using its Sputnik V vaccine as a tool to spread Moscow's influence.

"That is what real solidarity work looks like, that is true health cooperation," Le Drian said.

Russia registered Sputnik V in August, ahead of large-scale clinical trials, prompting worries among many experts over the fast-track process.

Later reviews have been largely positive, with leading medical journal The Lancet publishing results showing it is safe and more than 90 percent effective.