10,000 New Confirmed Coronavirus Infections in Russia Bring Total There Almost 200,000

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 9 – May 9^th this year is likely to be remembered less as Victory Day than as the 150^th day since the coronavirus was identified, the 60^th day since the WHO declared it a pandemic, and the day on which the infected in Russia rose another 10,000 to 199,000 (ura.news/news/1052431065 and vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2020/05/09/829872-dannie).

            But because it was Victory Day, Vladimir Putin appeared in public for the first time in 32 days. It was noted that he wasn’t wearing a mask but officials said they had disinfected everywhere he went (ehorussia.com/new/node/20755). And in various parts of Russia, people also celebrated in public despite the ban on doing so (sibreal.org/a/30602745.html).

            Any celebratory feelings, however, were dampened by reports that the pandemic is still spreading across the country too rapidly for there to be any lifting of the restrictions (tass.ru/obschestvo/8435245) and by new reports about how many industries in how many places are being destroyed by the pandemic limitations (kommersant.ru/doc/4341120).

Meanwhile, there were eight other stories coming out of Russia about the pandemic and associated crisis worthy of note:

·         Russians whose jobs have at least for a time disappeared are “massively registering” on freelance job sites (rg.ru/2020/05/09/rossiiane-stali-massovo-registrirovatsia-na-frilans-birzhah.html).

·         New data show that Putin’s healthcare optimization has undermined the country’s ability to fight the coronavirus and that the situation would have been even worse if the coronavirus had arrived after his planned cuts were completed (ura.news/articles/1036280193).

·         Activists in non-Russian republics are now complaining to Moscow about the Russian government’s failure to provide money to the population now without work (capost.media/news/obshchestvo/the-dagestani-human-rights-activist-complained-to-putin-for-failure-to-render-aid-to-the-population-/).

·         Russian courts have resumed functioning in a more or less normal way. Many cases had been postponed as only the most critical ones continued via television. Now judges and other court officials are in their accustomed places but with face masks (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2020/05/08/829831-rossiiskie-sudi-vozvraschayutsya).

·         Cities far from Moscow are losing jobs more rapidly than the capital or those in European Russia (agoniya.eu/archives/5147).

·         Some Daghestani districts are now shutting themselves off from the rest of the republic and Russia because they do not trust Makhachkala to protect them.  This is a crisis in trust, political observer Aleksandr Vasilyev says (club-rf.ru/05/opinions/2155).

·         Ten Moscow hospitals were hit today by anonymous bomb threats. None of them proved to be real, but the calls did disorder operations for a time (rosbalt.ru/moscow/2020/05/09/1842553.html and ng.ru/news/678352.html).

·         And in a reminder of just how big Russia is and how some are able to escape the normal social networks, The Siberian Times reports on its interview with a woman who has been living as a hermit for years and is unaware that there is a pandemic (siberiantimes.com/other/others/features/russias-loneliest-woman-doesnt-know-there-is-virus-pandemic-in-the-world/).