Many of its orders for shots are behind schedule, prompting countries that trusted Russia to help them beat their coronavirus outbreaks to publicly complain.
Guatemala is one nation that has had enough. So far, it has only received 150,000 doses of the 8 million doses of Sputnik V vaccine Russia promised, for which it paid $80 million, Reuters reported.
Now Guatemala has asked Russia to pay back the it got in advance. Argentina, Mexico, and the Philippines also reported delays in the delivery of doses from Russia.
67 countries have now approved the use of the Sputnik V. Russia promised 896 million doses of the vaccine to other countries, the Moscow Times reported.
But it has failed to get even one tenth of those to its buyers. As of May, the country had only exported 15 million doses, according to a Reuters tally.
Sputnik V is slightly different from other two-shot vaccines, in that it uses a slightly different component for the first and for the second shot, meaning they are not interchangeable.
Algeria in January announced plans to deliver 500,000 vaccines free of charge, but only had 50,000 to give as of April 7, Foreign policy reported.
Tunisia, Algeria, and Guinea, three of the biggest markets for Sputnik V, have received just 100,000 doses of the vaccine combined, Foreign Policy reported.
Production of Sputnik V is tricky
Because Sputnik V uses different components in its doses, it is particularly difficult to make.
"The issue with that is you have to have two different factories or at least two separate sections to manufacture the two doses," Vikram Punia, founder of Pharmasyntez, a Russian pharmaceutical company, told The Moscow Times.
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As of Tuesday, Russia had produced 36.7 million vaccine doses, Russia's Trade Minister Denis Manturov said.
Up to 37 million doses could be produced in July alone, he said: 30 million in Russia and 5 to 6 million abroad.
That is still far fewer than the hundreds of millions of doses produced by Pfizer and AstraZeneca each month, Reuters noted.
Newly in crisis, Russia's 'absolute priority' is itself
Russia's vaccination campaign had been sluggish for months, with only 11% of its population fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, according to John Hopkins University data.
Russia is now struggling to meet demand at home. Local shortages have been reported in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and elsewhere in the country, the Moscow Times reported on Tuesday.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said last week: "The absolute priority is domestic consumption, vaccination of Russians. Satisfying the demand abroad is currently not possible; all obligations will be fulfilled later."
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