Can Russia deliver on its vaccine diplomacy?
Pandemic prompts significant drops in student enrollment
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — In its foreign policy, Russia tends to favor the hard power of military might and oil and gas exports. But in recent months, the Kremlin has scored a sweeping diplomatic win from an unexpected source: the success of its coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V.
While the United States and European countries have considered or implemented bans on vaccine exports to deal with shortages at home, Russia has earned plaudits by sharing its vaccine with countries around the world in an apparent act of enlightened self-interest.
More than 50 countries have ordered 1.2 billion doses of the Russian vaccine, buffing the image of Russian science and lifting Moscow’s influence around the world.
Yet in Russia things are not always what they seem, and this apparent triumph of soft-power diplomacy may not be all that the Kremlin would like the world to think. While Sputnik V is unquestionably effective, production is lagging, raising questions about whether Moscow may be promising far more vaccine exports than it can supply, and doing so at the expense of its own citizens.
The actual number of doses distributed within Russia is a state secret, said Dmitry Kulish, a professor at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow. Nevertheless, Russian officials are boasting of massive vaccine exports, and basking in the warm glow of the vaccine diplomacy that has generated.
“Soft power is the yawning, gaping hole in Russia’s global status,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group risk consultancy and a former American diplomat. “If they play their cards right here, vaccines could be very important.”
With vaccine shortages leaving the world too unprotected, even as dangerous variants spread misery, the Russian vaccine could also be important to the global fight against the pandemic — if there were enough to go around.
On Friday, President Joe Biden provided some relief, announcing that his administration would make good on a promise to donate $4 billion to the international effort to speed up the manufacturing and distribution of vaccines. And new pledges were made by the European Union, Japan, Germany and Canada.
But more is needed, especially as scientists make clear that no country is really safe until all are, since continued spread can lead to more variants.
And European officials — criticized
for their own missteps on vaccine distribution — have started to push back on Russia’s aggressive marketing of Sputnik, suggesting it is not the answer to the world’s problems. At least not yet.
“We still wonder why Russia is offering, theoretically, millions and millions of doses while not sufficiently progressing in vaccinating its own people,” the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, told a news conference last week. “This question should be answered.”
Despite the doubts, vaccine diplomacy has already furthered a number of goals for Moscow: It has helped deepen divisions within the European Union, sending a shipment to Hungary before regulators approved it for
the entire bloc; stirred domestic discord in Ukraine by highlighting slow Western vaccine supplies to the country; and circulated disinformation in Latin America that undermined public confidence in vaccines made in the United States.
“We are ready to lay down gas pipelines and supply cheap energy, we can sell you weapons and now we have this other dimension, this soft power: We are ready to offer you vaccine,” said Andrei Kortunov, chairman of the Russian International Affairs Council, a nongovernmental group analyzing Russian foreign policy.
The effort is part of a larger competition to use vaccines, in part, for diplomatic gain.
At Friday’s Munich Security
Conference, President Emmanuel Macron of France addressed that contest, saying that being too slow to help African countries would lead them to turn to China and Russia and leave the strength of the West “a concept, but not a reality.”
The Kremlin, for its part, has taken every opportunity to highlight its exports, some of them rather insignificant.
“Sputnik is entering new orbits,” a report on state television crowed this month, proudly showing crates of thousands of doses of vaccine being loaded onto an airplane leaving Russia for Argentina.
In Russia, so far at least, there has been little backlash over the exports, even though at the end of 2020 it had the third-highest number of excess deaths in the world after the United States and Brazil.
Only 2.2 million Russians (less than 2%) have received a first dose of the two-shot vaccine, according to the latest figures provided by a Russian official recently. In the United States, at least 41 million people (around 13%) have received first injections, despite a rocky rollout.
The reason for that lack of public acceptance, analysts say, is that many Russians are so distrustful of their own government that they dismiss clinical trials that have shown Sputnik V to be safe and highly effective. In a poll taken last fall, 59% of Russians said they did not intend to be vaccinated.
Fully stocked vaccination sites in Moscow are frequently empty. The fears haven’t been helped by the example of President Vladimir Putin, who has yet to take the vaccine himself.
Kulish, a consultant to Russian pharmaceutical companies, said that several vaccine makers delayed production for months last year while waiting for critical pieces of equipment that are made in China and were in short supply.
“Unfortunately, Russia does not produce biotech equipment at all,” he said, adding that he expected output to increase starting this month.
But that remains to be seen. At one site producing vaccine under contract by a company outside St. Petersburg last week, vials of Sputnik vaccine rolled off a production line, each holding five doses and the potential to save lives.
Yet, scaling output has been a challenge. “It’s a very capricious technology,” Dmitry Morozov, the chief executive of the company, Biocad, said. His company received the contract in September and by early February had produced only 1.8 million two-dose sets — a far cry from the hundreds of millions promised by the Kremlin to foreign purchasers.
PHOENIX — Peniella Irakoze is cold calling a list of 1,001 fellow students who didn’t return to Phoenix College this semester, checking on how they’re managing during the coronavirus pandemic.
The calls have become a regular part of her job at a community college like others across the U.S. that have experienced significant enrollment declines as students face challenges with finances, family life and virtual learning.
“I didn’t know that so many people were struggling,” said Irakoze, 20, who studies medical laboratory science and works part time for the college. “So many students aren’t coming back.”
Nationwide, enrollment at community colleges — which offer two-year degrees and vocational training and often attract older students looking to learn new skills — dropped 10% from fall 2019 to fall 2020, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.
While it was no surprise that fewer freshmen enrolled at fouryear and community colleges, delaying studies until campuses fully reopen, the pandemic took a much heavier toll on older adult students who frequently choose the community college route. Many lost jobs or have no time for their own schooling as they supervise their children’s online classes.
“The majority of them are working, many of them in industries that have been decimated by the pandemic,” said Martha Parham, a senior vice president for the American Association of Community Colleges. “Trying to navigate that and take classes is a very daunting challenge at this time.”
Depression and anxiety also disrupted the academic careers of community college students, including Stephanie Cruz Vazquez.
She said her severe anxiety was amplified so much by her virus concerns that she decided last year to take a year off from fashion design classes at Mesa Community College near Phoenix.
“The pandemic really pushed me over the edge,” said Cruz Vazquez, 20, who ended up infected with COVID-19 with her parents. They all recovered.
More Americans typically turn to community college education amid economic downturns, seeking to learn new job skills or change careers.
But the depth of the pandemic’s downturn, which kept many people homebound, seems to have upended usual trends, education experts said.
That troubles advocates and policy makers who cite community colleges as important options for low-income Americans. At a Senate hearing this month, Miguel Cardona, President Joe Biden’s pick for education secretary, called for federal financial support to help hurting community colleges, calling them “this nation’s best-kept secret.”
Even in good economic times, many community college students struggle to stay in school while juggling the demands of supporting families, paying rent and covering tuition.
The added challenge of the pandemic was too much for many students, said Ralph Thompson, interim dean of students at Phoenix College.
Its enrollment was at 10,978 in the fall of 2019 but dropped to 9,446 a year later, a decline of 14%, according to the Maricopa County Community College District, which counts Phoenix College among its 10 community colleges.
Thompson assigned Irakoze to call fellow students to see how they are coping, saying they “need to feel engaged” during their isolation.
“The students need to hear that someone understands what they are going through,” Thompson said.
Across the U.S., community colleges have reported surging demand from students who need help getting food, prompting them to expand food pantries and grocery programs — in some cases tripling the amount of food distributed in past years.
At MassBay Community College near Boston, meal assistance scholarship applications have increased 80% since last year. Dinora Torres — a single mother with four young daughters — said the program helped keep her enrolled.
“If I didn’t have that, I don’t know if I could have been able to make it,” said Torres, 29, who hopes to transfer to a four-year university and get a bachelor’s accounting degree. “It has been really hard. A lot of nights I’m not sleeping. Some days I would have to send my kids to my parents so I could work all day on catching up.”
MassBay suffered a 10% enrollment decrease, but officials have been ramping up relief aid for students. Torres said donors arranged by the college bought her family a Thanksgiving meal and Christmas presents for her daughters.
Advocates hope the enrollment downturn is temporary and some predict many students will return to classes when campuses reopen and jobs return.
But at least some are expected to forgo higher education, which experts say could translate to a lifetime of lower earnings and financial challenges
According to the National Student Clearinghouse, the community colleges enrollment decrease was most pronounced among Black students and Native Americans, groups that both experienced 13% declines over the last year. White and Hispanic community college enrollment fell 10% and Asian enrollment dropped 5%.