“Moscow’s ham-fisted approach was explicit and brazen. By trashing the reputation of Western vaccines and showcasing individual adverse reactions from all over the world, the Russian state media sought to discredit competitors and promote its own vaccines. Instead, vaccine hesitancy in Russia is now through the roof, and stories of people using prosthetic limbs for COVID shots and faking vaccine certificates are rampant. Russia now has the highest tracked rate of vaccine opposition in the world, according to a recent study by Morning Consult, with the U.S. coming in second. A July survey by Russia’s Levada-Center showed that the most popular reason for refusing vaccination is the fear of side effects” the Daily Beast reports.

“When Russia announced that its health ministry is testing the effectiveness of combining Sputnik V with AstraZeneca, the public response demonstrated just how successful the propaganda campaigns have been. Appearing on various Russian TV shows, multiple guests appeared shocked and bashed the idea, with some saying: ‘Need a new batch of volunteers with no survival instinct?’ and ‘Darwin’s hypothesis will come true in the reverse order: A man will turn into a monkey.’ Addressing Russia’s struggle to get the pandemic under control, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Tuesday that ‘the not-very-rapid vaccination pace is among the reasons why we have so far been unable to radically contain the spread of the disease.’ Turns out that fearmongering about other vaccines leads to a distrust in all of them. As a well-known Russian proverb goes: Don’t dig a hole for someone else, or you may fall into it yourself.”