Ukraine has closed down the television stations owned by Taras Kozak, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament from the “Opposition Platform — For Life” party, headed by Viktor Medvedchuk. The stations have been covering Medvedchuk’s campaign to use Russia’s Sputnik V vaccines in Ukraine. (Medvedchuk had arranged with Putin and the Gamaleya Institute for the Ukrainian pharmaceutical company Biolik to produce the vaccine.)
Previously, Ukraine’s head of state, Volodymyr Zelensky, had begged his staunch Western backers for access to vaccines, saying that Ukrainian TV stations are showing Ukraine’s neighbors happily getting the Russian vaccine, and that it was getting impossibly difficult to convince Ukrainians to hold the line and stick with the West when they were leaving Ukrainians in the cold on vaccines. Zelensky’s approval ratings have been tanking.
So, while many European countries watching Hungary’s defiance of the EU bureaucracy have now begun to open up to Russian and Chinese vaccines, Ukraine has become even more reactionary. They passed a law last week banning Russian vaccines. Health Minister Maksym Stepanov bragged: “One political force just created some hysteria over the registration of the Russian vaccine. I can say at once: You can be hysterical for a very long time. No one will register the Russian vaccine in the country.”
