Putin's top Ukraine negotiator plotted to send expired Covid vaccines to Africa

Telegraph

27-04-2025

Vladimir Putin's key man in talks with Donald Trump was behind a secret plot to challenge US influence by donating expired Covid vaccines to Africa, The Telegraph can reveal.
The scheme was spearheaded by Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, who now hold a major role in Russia's negotiations with the US over Ukraine.
In classified letters obtained by a European intelligence source and provided to The Telegraph, Mr Dmitriev urged the Russian health ministry to push back the expiration date on 6 million doses of the Sputnik Light jab by two months.
The doses were to be donated as 'humanitarian aid' at a Russia-Africa summit originally scheduled for October 2022.
'The key competitors of Russian vaccines, including the United States, are already supplying a number of countries with free vaccines,' Mr Dmitriev wrote in a letter to Mikhail Murashko, the Russian health minister, which was marked as classified.
'Due to the current geopolitical situation, the possibility of organising humanitarian deliveries of Russian vaccines to friendly African countries is extremely urgent. We also request your assistance in promptly extending the shelf life of over 6 million doses of the vaccine Sputnik Light.'
It remains unclear whether Mr Dmitriev, whose father was a well-known Ukrainian biologist, offered any scientific justifications for extending the shelf life of the jabs.
Anthony Cox, a professor of clinical pharmacy and drug safety, said: 'Changes in expiration dates should be based on scientific data about the stability and potency of the vaccine, and there are clear ethical concerns if political considerations are in play.'
Eight months after Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin was jostling with its Western rivals for influence in the global south.
Russia has repeatedly targeted the African continent with soft-power campaigns.
The classified documents reveal the importance the Kremlin placed on diplomatic programmes during its most isolated period in the middle of 2022, when international outrage over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine was at its height.
Mr Dmitriev's current role at the heart of the negotiations between Washington and Moscow ignores his shadowy past as one of Putin's most loyal henchmen. He headed the development of, and became the chief promoter of, Russia's Covid vaccines programme, which was facilitated by Moscow's biological weapons programme.
This included the 48th Central Research Institute, which was sanctioned by the US government for its connection to the development of illicit weapons.
There is evidence to suggest that the Russians carried out unlawful human testing on the populations of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, which were illegally annexed from Ukraine by Russian-backed proxies.
Russian military doctors affiliated with the institute also conducted a coercive vaccination campaign in the then Russian-occupied territories with vaccines that had not been certified by the European Medicines Agency.
Mr Dmitriev has since been appointed as Putin's special envoy for investment and economic co-operation with foreign countries, and is a key member of Russia's negotiating peace team.
His importance was indicated by the American government's decision to temporarily lift sanctions on him to enable a visit to the White House at the invitation of Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump's special envoy, and he was seen in a video clip on Friday giving Mr Witkoff a tour of Moscow.
Mr Dmitriev, who was born in Kyiv, studied at Harvard and Stanford and has worked at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs and has often been trusted by Putin to oversee major projects.
As well as building a relationship with Mr Witkoff, he has close relationships with Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Erik Prince, an ex-Blackwater boss, and Jared Kushner, Mr Trump's son-in-law.