Big Pharma's attack on Russia: A beginner's guide
Big Pharma's attack on Russia: A beginner's guide
Russian media report names and shames (some of) the Big Pharma collaborators
About a month ago, Vladimir Putin met with Yury Chikhanchin, head of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, to discuss various hot button issues, including Big Pharma and its slithery ways. During their conversation, Chikhanchin revealed foreign drug companies were raining rubles on Russian medical officials and doctors.
Putin agreed Big Pharma was awful and that it was feeding rubles to corrupt public servants all over the place—not just in Russia.
We wrote about this interesting conversation on June 29. “For now it’s just talk, but let’s see? Maybe the FSB will do something to stop this mess”—we observed.
There have been no public announcements about FSB raids targeting Russia’s beloved public health experts, but check this out: Russia’s “Top Secret” magazine just published an excellent summary of Big Pharma’s grip on the country, and what needs to be done to stop it.
A seasoned reader of Edward Slavsquat will notice the below article highlights the same Big Pharma shenanigans (both foreign and domestic) that we incessantly type about, day after day.
Below is an abridged/excerpted version of Top Secret’s report.
[Speaking about the probe into Big Pharma criminality in Russia], Chikhanchin did not name the specific persons involved in the investigation, but I really hope that the special services will have enough political will to investigate the activities of those pharmaceutical corporations that have literally terrorized the country over the past two years, imposing their services and products on people through violence and blackmail. What can I say, the COVID saga has clearly shown that Big Pharma has long settled in our country, and feels at home. And its representatives openly, without ceremony, act as curators of domestic medicine.
THE ADVENTURES OF ASTRAZENECA IN RUSSIA OR: WHAT DOES SPUTNIK V HAVE TO DO WITH IT?
Last fall, when a lively discussion began on social networks about the not entirely domestic origin of the famous vaccine against the new coronavirus infection, advertised everywhere at the time, REGNUM journalists conducted their own investigation and discovered some very interesting facts.
It was revealed that the Gamaleya Center, headed by Alexander Gintsburg, and a foreign manufacturer of vaccines—the company AstraZeneca, which has repeatedly found itself in the center of high-profile international scandals—had established a close long-term business relationship!
As it turned out, one of the main manufacturers of Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Center, is the R-Pharm company of oligarch Alexei Repik. Back in July 2020, Repik announced R-Pharm’s Russian enterprises would produce AstraZeneca’s anti-COVID vaccine AZD1222.
And already in December 2020, R-Pharm, together with AstraZeneca, the Russian Direct Investment Fund, and the Gamaleya Center, began clinical trials of a well-known two-component drug, consisting of AstraZeneca’s AZD1222 and “Sputnik Light (component 1 of GamCOVID-Vac).”
According to the results of the investigation, AstraZeneca has its own legal entities inside Russia. Since November 2005, the Unified State Register of Legal Entities has included AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LLC, owned by AstraZeneca Treasury Limited (Great Britain). According to the document, in the first year of the pandemic, the revenue of this company amounted to about 28 billion rubles with a net profit of 1.7 billion rubles.
AstraZeneca has already managed to launch tentacles into our budget, apparently counting on a large jackpot. So, from January 1, 2022, presumably, not without reliable patronage, AstraZeneca’s Calquence [a medicine used to treat lymphoma] was included in the state list of vital drugs.
WHY DOESN’T RUSSIA EXIT THE THREE-LETTERED GLOBAL COMMERCIAL ORGANIZATION?
According to Rosstat, the decline in the population of the Russian Federation in 2021 alone amounted to over a million people. This is the highest figure since the end of the Great Patriotic War. Apart from the natural causes for which a person can die, the lion’s share of these deaths was the monstrous result of those reforms that over the years, purposefully, step by step, killed domestic medicine, turning it into a miserable incapacitated system controlled from the outside.
Fanning hysteria around an officially undeclared pandemic, various restrictions that deprive people of the opportunity to actively move and breathe fresh air, the inability to receive timely planned medical care, the killing of small and medium-sized businesses in the context of the financial crisis, the disappointing statistics of suicides among people of working age, unemployment—what does all this have to do with our health care?
But all this is the consequences of the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), mostly funded by the world’s largest pharmaceutical corporations and other organizations with very dubious reputations. What do investors expect when investing in a particular project? That's right, net income.
We all rejoiced when, from the high rostrum of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, the deputies of all parliamentary factions, without exception, spoke unanimously about leaving the WHO. But the euphoria did not last long, the topic somehow began to fade away, and then it was completely removed from the agenda.
As official sources later commented, representatives of the Ministry of Health did not support the initiative of the deputies. Why—the department did not specify. Although, if you think about it...
The aforementioned pharmaceutical oligarch Repik, who is also called one of the main beneficiaries of the pandemic in the Russian Federation, once back in 2015, in an interview with Forbes magazine, boasted that “connections, efficiency, risk and funds help him make money.”
And the oligarch Repik earns a lot on our health. To the point of obscenity. According to independent research by the DSM Group agency, at the end of 2021, Repik was first in the ranking of pharmaceutical manufacturers who replenished their accounts with the sale of medicines for COVID-19 through public procurement. The study says the R-Pharm company gained about 25 billion rubles, which is a quarter of all the funds spent by our state on the purchase of drugs recommended by the Ministry of Health.
Why do you think the Ministry of Health decided to favor Repik, who is promoting the products of one of the largest WHO sponsors on the Russian pharmaceutical market?
Maybe the FSB officers should pay close attention to this particular citizen and his connections?
MINISTRY OF HEALTH RECOMMENDS TO FULLY RESUME PROVISION OF ROUTINE MEDICAL CARE, AND THE CAPITAL CONTINUES TO “OPTIMIZE” URBAN MEDICINE
On July 6, 2022, the text of an order was published on the internet portal of legal information, stating that the Ministry of Health of Russia recommends that the regional authorities resume the provision of planned medical care to the population in full, including in hospitals that were previously redesigned to help patients with coronavirus infection. […]
However, for the Moscow authorities, who are annoyed by the very fact that “a patient is lying in the hospital for half a month,” it seems that this decree has not been fulfilled. City officials continue to “optimize” the capital’s healthcare system, reducing the number of hospitals with amazing obstinacy.
Take a look at Clinical Hospital No. 70, in the Eastern Administrative District of Moscow City. Residents of the Perovo and Novogireevo districts immediately suspected something was wrong when they learned that the modern, multidisciplinary clinic, fully equipped with the latest equipment, stopped accepting patients for planned and emergency hospitalization. And in May, when the perinatal center of the 70th hospital, well-known throughout Moscow, was still closed, the public sounded the alarm and turned to the deputies from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with a request for help. […]
State Duma deputy Sergei Obukhov (KPRF) and Moscow City Duma deputy Yevgeny Stupin (KPRF) sent official requests to the mayor’s office demanding to explain what was actually happening in the City Clinical Hospital No. 70 and why such decisions, affecting the interests of life and health of the inhabitants of the entire district, are made without any public discussion. The answer from the mayor’s office was received and for some reason did not surprise anyone.
“What I received from Moscow City Hall: ‘The information that Moscow residents are worried about the closure of the hospital has been taken into account. The perinatal center is temporarily closed for sanitary and preventive measures. Currently, preparations are being made here for the creation of a specialized reserve obstetric bed fund for pregnant women with Covid-19,’” State Duma deputy Sergei Obukhov told Top Secret. […]
Residents of the Eastern Administrative District decided to fight for their hospital and organized a collection of signatures in support of the clinic. And the deputies, in turn, promised to make inquiries to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Investigative Committee and other executive bodies in order to finally stop the further killing of the capital’s healthcare.
What do you think, dear readers, is this whole situation around the closure of the 70th city hospital a banal bureaucratic greed? Or, given the current difficult situation, deliberate sabotage, supervised from the outside?
WILL THE LAW ON SABOTAGE BE RETURNED TO RUSSIA’S CRIMINAL CODE?
On July 8, 2022, Andrei Klishas, Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation, announced that the National Anti-Corruption Committee of Russia proposed returning the article “on sabotage” to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
“The essence of the proposal is that the incompetence of officials, which leads to threats to the country, is also the basis for bringing these persons to criminal liability. The proposal, at the very least, deserves serious discussion. When you look at the ‘successes’ of our departments in import substitution and other areas, I would very much like to return the article on sabotage to the Criminal Code, this is so,” Klishas wrote on his Telegram channel, commenting on the proposal.
Do you think the state of today’s domestic medicine can be attributed to those “successes” that the senator is talking about? Doesn’t the activity of the officials responsible for this amount to “sabotage”?
It is no coincidence that right now the topic, including medical sovereignty, has so keenly interested both the president and legislators. The owners of the transnational corporations, dubious global organizations, and our own government officials who have fallen under their influence and are playing by their rules, have begun to pose a grave threat to Russia.
More proof that when you read Edward Slavsquat, you are actually reading the most poignant ruminations of Russia’s greatest living thinkers.
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Wow. 1 million less population in 2021 alone?!
Funny. In 2018 Putin wanted to increase the retirement age and many protests occurred. Then .... Voila... in 2019 the virus shows up that mainly affects the elderly.
Many countries have underfunded senior pensions. Not sure why this isn’t talked about more. There is a few articles out there about China pension problem too.
Wonder why Facebook banned them last year? Lol. Idk. Just ideas to consider.
An Indian factory was manufacturing both Sputnik and Astro Zeneca last year. Figured myself, based on that fact, that they were one and the same.