U.S. reportedly links Russian intelligence to disinformation campaign against COVID-19 vaccines

The United States has identified a Russian-led disinformation campaign seeking to undermine confidence in the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, an official with the State Department's Global Engagement Center told The Wall Street Journal.

The official said four websites that U.S. intelligence has marked as fronts for Russian intelligence have exaggerated the risk of side effects associated with the Pfizer shot and other Western vaccines and falsely questioned their efficacy and speed of their approval process. The sites don't have large readership numbers, but officials are reportedly concerned they could be amplified.

Pfizer is likely the main target because it was the first vaccine besides Russia's own Sputnik V to see widespread, global use, the Journal reports. An upcoming report from the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a German Marshall Fund-affiliated NGO which focuses on authoritarian governments, reportedly says Russia likely views Pfizer as a threat to "Sputnik's market dominance."

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A spokesman for the Kremlin denied that Moscow was orchestrating a campaign against any vaccine, arguing that if Russia were to treat "every negative publication" about the Sputnik jab "as a result of efforts by American special services, then we will go crazy because we see it every day, every hour, and in every Anglo-Saxon media." Read more at The Wall Street Journal.