The Russian Orthodox Church believes that the West does not recognize the Sputnik V vaccine in order to isolate Russia.
The fact that” the Russian vaccine is no worse than the Western ones, “said Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the Rossiya 24 TV channel. This is reported by the ROC website.
"Non-recognition of vaccines will increasingly create difficulties. I see this exclusively as a political situation because the Russian vaccine is no worse than the Western ones, but this is used to put additional pressure on Russia so that Russia is isolated, including in terms of epidemic indicators. There are no objective reasons not to recognize Russian vaccines. There is only a political situation,” Hilarion (Alfeyev) emphasized.
We will add that Putin in October applied to the G20 countries with a request to "work out the issue" of mutual recognition of national certificates of vaccination against coronavirus. However, Russian drugs declared by developers as vaccines against coronavirus are not recognized by WHO and US and EU regulators, so their use is not allowed. In particular, the effectiveness and safety of Sputnik V are considered unproven.
At the same time, the Russian Federation does not recognize foreign vaccines, so people are injected with Russian vaccines inside the country, as well as in the territories occupied by Moscow (Crimea, Eastern Ukraine). As a result, Russia refuses to recognize International covid certificates, and developed countries, in turn, do not consider Russian QR codes to be vaccination documents.