Russia’s version of America’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine project is located far from the Kremlin on a sleepy side street on the outskirts of Moscow.
Tucked in a sandy-brick building with an office advertising medical tests and a dingy wooden door, it doesn’t look like a cutting-edge medical laboratory. But it was here that, if you believe President Vladimir Putin, Russia won the global race to develop a vaccine against COVID-19.
Praising the developers at the state-run Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Putin declared in August that Russia had registered a shot for public use, making it the first vaccine worldwide to gain such clearance. Russia named it Sputnik V after the Soviet-era satellite that set off the space race in 1957 — a clear signal of the geopolitical importance Putin has attached to the project.