Russia still expects to ink deal with Astra Zeneca for Covid-19 vaccine

Russia still expects to conclude a deal with AstraZeneca to manufacture the Covid-19 vaccine that it is working on with Oxford University.

In an interview with Reuters, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said he still expected such a deal to go through, despite allegations that Moscow had tried to steal research data by hacking into the computer networks of scientific institutes around the world.

British intelligence ascribed a 95% probability to the chance of the hackers being linked to the Russian state.

Indeed, such a deal might be announced later on Friday, he said.

"There's nothing that needs to be stolen [...] It's all going to be given to Russia."