Sputtering V

Russia's vaccine against COVID-19 might be too good to be true.

You know I’m no fan of the current Russian government (nor any Russian government for the past few hundred years, come to think of it) but I’ve actually been cautiously optimistic about Sputnik V, the vaccine against COVID-19 they rushed into production last year. I wouldn’t take Putin’s word that the vaccine worked, but studies published in credible medical journals like The Lancet suggested it might actually work.

However, one European country that bet big on Sputnik V, Slovakia, is expressing some buyer's remorse:

Russia called on Slovakia on Thursday to return hundreds of thousands of doses of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, citing contract violations, in an escalating row between the two countries after a Slovak watchdog raised doubts about the shot.

Earlier on Thursday, Slovakia's SUKL drug agency said the batches of Sputnik V vaccines it had received differed from those reviewed by international scientists and by the European Union regulator.

Slovakia imported 200,000 doses of…