Kirill Dmitriev: Russia's Sputnik V a vaccine for humankind?
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 2021
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Right now the world is seeing two sides of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The one he wants you to see is the scientifically advanced nation offering the world an effective Covid vaccine known as Sputnik V. The one he’d rather you ignore is the repressive authoritarian state that ruthlessly eliminates those who threaten the status quo. Stephen Sackur speaks to Kirill Dmitriev a Putin ally, the boss of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds and a key backer of the Russian vaccine.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:04.5 | My guest today is one of the most interesting figures in the inner circle of Russia's President Vladimir Putin. |
| 0:11.4 | Kiril Demetriyev is a money man, an academically gifted, highly ambitious financier who moved to California as a teenager, |
| 0:19.3 | graduated from Stanford and Harvard Business School, |
| 0:22.9 | gained experience at Goldman Sachs, and then returned to Russia to forge a career based on business acumen |
| 0:30.4 | and impeccable connections. For the past eight years, he's been in charge of the Russian |
| 0:36.3 | direct investment fund, a sovereign wealth |
| 0:39.2 | fund designed to draw international capital into Russia in joint ventures with the Russian state. |
| 0:46.3 | Of late, his prime focus has been the rollout of Russia's own COVID vaccine known as Sputnik. |
| 0:53.6 | Research data suggests it is at least as effective as many |
| 0:57.1 | of the vaccines to emerge from Western labs, and Russia is offering it to nations around the |
| 1:02.6 | world in a very public demonstration of soft power. At the same time, though, Vladimir Putin continues |
| 1:09.8 | to exhibit a penchant for ruthless repression of political opponents, |
| 1:14.7 | most notably the anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who survived an assassination attempt but now faces years in prison. |
| 1:23.6 | So what should we make of Russia today? Is it a story defined by repression or renewal? Well, |
| 1:31.8 | Kiriel Demetriyev joins me now on the line from Moscow. Welcome to Hard Talk. |
| 1:37.2 | Thank you, Stephen. Let us start with the project which has occupied so much of your time and energy |
| 1:44.1 | in recent months. |
| 1:45.9 | That is the development of the Sputnik 5 vaccine, which your investment fund has effectively |
| 1:54.2 | financed. How satisfied are you with what you've achieved? |
| 1:59.4 | Well, I think we really created a vaccine for humankind, and we actually call it Sputnik V, not Sputnik 5, and that is just one of the smallest misunderstandings that we've seen in the history of the vaccine, because it is recognized, including the Lancet publication, as having one of the most efficient vaccines |
| 2:18.1 | in the world, with efficacy more than 90%, as a safe vaccine based on human viral vector, |
... |
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