Strategic Health Frontiers: Decoding Russian Global Health From 'Sputnik-V' Diplomacy to 'Sanitary Shield' Security

While pandemic preparedness and the next international response to the health crisis must be more efficient, Russia is a critical starting point for thinking about the future of cooperation on global health security. Together, the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic has driven Russian health policy – both domestic and international – into the grasp of state military and security purposes.

Would a wartime security approach to global health be inconsistent with the Kremlin’s diplomacy logic and overriding goals to remain a global technologically and scientifically advanced superpower?

Quite to the contrary! Russian global health policy and practice employ strategic, long-term approaches keeping its focus as anti-Western as a great power at war.

Even though it has become much harder to navigate Russia in global health, Moscow did not cease its actions. The "Sanitary Shield" biosecurity strategy replaced Sputnik-V vaccine diplomacy drawing the lessons from the COVID-19 competitive global health environment. Dodging sanctions – causing cuts in science cooperation and logistic problems for its biotechnological industry - Moscow is developing new global health strategies. The Russian playbook on the future of international health security and beyond has proven disruptive, aligning politically with China, particularly in their voting patterns at the UN and joint disinformation strategies. Instead, the Global South strategy on health is aimed at creating alternation export/import routes, supply chains and pharmaceutical manufacturing capacities.

This talk will focus on an analysis of renewed Russian foreign policy strategy, its continuity and change, and cases of Kremlin’s wartime diplomacy in global health from different regions.