As the coronavirus surges again, governments across the European Union are struggling to secure vaccine supplies. Few if any member states will likely meet the target set by Brussels to vaccinate 70 percent of their adult populations by the end of the summer. Keen to exploit this struggle to procure shots to sow disunity within the EU, Russia and China have stepped in with their own vaccine diplomacy. Nowhere is this strategy working better than in Central and Eastern Europe.
Some countries in the region, including the Czech Republic and Slovakia, have battled some of the worst COVID-19 infection rates in the world this year. With vaccination programs all but stalled due to issues with the EU’s common procurement system, some desperate leaders have jumped at the opportunity to import Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinopharm vaccines, which haven’t been approved by the EU’s European Medicines Agency (EMA).
