North Macedonia PM Blames ‘NATO Commitments’ For Vaccine Fiasco

NATO on Wednesday declined to comment on claims by North Macedonia's leader that the country's NATO commitments had got in the way of timely purchases of COVID vaccines.

"We won't comment on remarks attributed to the Prime Minister of North Macedonia," an unnamed NATO official told BIRN on Wednesday, adding: "NATO takes no position on national vaccination strategies. This remains a national, sovereign prerogative."

NATO made the remarks after Prime Minister Zoran Zaev insisted NATO commitments had stopped his country from acquiring Russian or Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines sooner, as neighbouring Serbia did.

"We are different from Serbia because our people decided we are pro-NATO, so we make our decisions in accordance with our strategic commitments and probably Serbia, because … they express themselves as military-political neutral, had the opportunity to strike agreements directly with countries that are not members of the EU or NATO, i.e. China and Russia," Zaev told Sitel TV on Tuesday.

Zaev added that this policy had changed once the world realized the serious shortage of vaccines. "Then a general policy and strategy developed that this is a sovereign right [to buy vaccines] and we acted immediately and immediately placed orders from China and Russia," Zaev added.

North Macedonia became NATO's 30th member state in 2020.

Zaev's government is under intense criticism for not pursuing deals with Russia and China to buy their vaccines early on, last autumn, as Serbia did. Instead, it initially relied solely on the WHO-backed COVAX mechanism, which has failed to deliver.

Unlike militarily neutral Serbia, which leads the region in terms of vaccination of its population, North Macedonia only struck deals with Chinese...