Putin Not Choosing Between Saving People and Saving Economy; He’s Only Seeking to Save Himself, Eidman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 11 – It is now a commonplace that national leaders confronted by the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic must balance between taking measures that protect the health of the population and those which will save the economy from collapse, recognizing that any more too far with regard to one may have adverse effects on the other.

            But Vladimir Putin, Russian sociologist Igor Eidman says, is choosing, in typical Russian fashion “a third way which is leading to maximum losses economically and politically” (gordonua.com/blogs/eydman/vse-strany-spasayut-ili-lyudey-ili-ekonomiku-no-putin-poshel-po-tretemu-puti-vedushchemu-k-maksimalnym-i-ekonomicheskim-i-chelovecheskim-poteryam-1499315.html).

            First, the Kremlin leader took steps that “killed the economy, but he was not able by that to stop the epidemic.” And then, Eidman continues, Putin imposed restrictions on the population only to lift them at a time when the spread of the pandemic is increasing in the Russian Federation at an even more rapid rate.

            The impact on the health of the people and the health of the economy will thus become increasingly deleterious and mutually reinforcing with the health problems Putin is unleashing making the economy worse and the economic decline he is overseeing ensuring that the health of the population will decline.

            Although Eidman does not say so in this post, he has indicated in others that the source of the problem is that Putin isn’t concerned about either but only about his own political survival and is approaching that problem increasingly in a tactical rather than strategic manner, something that may guarantee he will ultimately fail in that sphere as well.