Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday asked Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova to start mass vaccination against the coronavirus next week.

"I know that we have manufactured or will have manufactured more than 2 million doses [of vaccine] of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in the next few days, it was the first in the world to be registered. This allows us to start large-scale vaccination, if not a mass one, and of course, as we had agreed, it would concern the two at-risk groups first of all, doctors and teachers," Putin said.