Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 27 – Vladimir Putin’s decision
to reschedule Russia’s Victory Day parade for June 24 long before the coronavirus
pandemic will be over and even before Moscow will have in place protective
measures has provoked two commentaries, one very specific too this decision and
a second of a more profound kind.
On the one hand, Moscow commentator
Andrey Nikulin has suggested that “it is possible that we will recall this [Putin
scheduling] in the same way as we already now remember the May 1 parade in Kyiv”
which Soviet officials ordered to go ahead only five says after the Chernobyl
disaster, exposing thousands to radiation (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5ECD4413115C2).
And on the other, it has prompted Business
Insider to point out that Putin’s decision to ignore the facts and science
in this case puts him in the company of the presidents of the US and Brazil as one
of the three world leaders who have mishandled the pandemic (businessinsider.com/trump-putin-and-bolsonaro-anti-science-leadership-worst-coronavirus-outbreaks-2020-5 discussed in Russian at newtimes.ru/articles/detail/194553).
As if to add an exclamation point to
Putin’s pen contempt for medical expertise and the well-being of Russians, the
head of the Russian government’s pandemic information service says that fears
about the coronavirus are “all bullshit” (themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/27/its-all-bullsht-russias-coronavirus-information-chief-says-of-virus-fears-a70398).
Such decisions and statements provide
support for those like regional commentator Pavel Luzin that “the struggle with
the epidemic in Russia “bears a political rather than a medical nature” and
that the only thing being injected into the Russian people by it is a new dose
of most unhealthy totalitarianism (region.expert/biopolitics/).
Russian officials announced that 8338
more cases of coronavirus infection had been registered bringing the total to
370,680. They added that 3968 of those infected had died. At the same time, as
they are now doing each day, the officials reported that “more than a third” of
those infected had recovered (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5ECE1871F19CF).
But a new poll shows that more than
three-quarters of Russian doctors don’t believe the government’s mortality
statistics (ehorussia.com/new/node/20860).
Their own experiences bely such claims (echo.msk.ru/blog/statya/2649911-echo/),
and they could point to a new move by the health ministry for evidence that all
its statistics are problematic.
The ministry released guidance telling doctors
not to register as coronavirus victims anyone who tests positive but does not show
symptoms, a decision that will reduce the numbers (static-1.rosminzdrav.ru/system/attachments/attaches/000/050/527/original/27052020_MR_STAT_1.pdf
and snob.ru/society/minzdrav-rekomendoval-ne-vklyuchat-v-obshuyu-statistiku-po-covid-19-teh-u-kogo-net-zhalob/).
Today, ever more evidence came in that
Russia has not developed a system to deal with hotspots likely to emerge when
the economy reopens (ng.ru/economics/2020-05-27/4_7871_epidemy.html)
and that Putin’s optimization has left the country without top flight medical
labs needed to develop vaccines (ng.ru/science/2020-05-26/9_7870_medicine.html).
Meanwhile, in other pandemic news from
Russia,
·
Chechen
leader Ramzan Kadyrov announced that he is completely healthy (newtimes.ru/news/detail/194572).
·
More
Russians protested the lack of legal foundations for many of the regime’s anti-pandemic
measures (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5ECE360157123).
·
Russian
museums are struggling to put pictures of their holdings on line and to organize
Internet presentations (iq.hse.ru/news/368076865.html).
·
In many rural areas of Russia, the pandemic has not
brought disease but serious economic hardship as farmers have lost the
customers for their products (etokavkaz.ru/proizvodstvo/derevyam-bez-raznitcy-est-pandemiya-ili-net).
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