Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 5 – Russia is the only
country where the pandemic continues in its second month continues to grow
exponentially, the result, Leonid Volkov says, of the time lost because
Vladimir Putin and his regime were focused during the first months of the coronavirus
on amending the constitution rather than on taking care of the Russian people.
The Aleksey Navalny ally says that
because of that earlier failure, “the Russian authorities now cannot achieve
successes in the struggle with the epidemic;” and thus, while there are several
factors that have played a role, “the main one of them” is Vladimir Putin who
is focused only on himself (newsru.com/blog/04may2020/proval.html).
For the last two weeks, Volkov
points out, Russia “almost every day occupies second place in terms of the absolute
growth of new cases” of infection, “and first, relative to population.” Over
this period, the number of new cases in the Russian Federation has grown by 315
percent, more than any advanced country and less only than the rates in Peru
and Mexico.
The only statistic where Russia
appears to be doing “surprisingly well” is the number of deaths. But the real question here is not how many
have died but how much have the authorities encouraged doctors to lie and then
lied themselves. The powers that be have
lied for so long about so many things that to lie about the health of the
nation seems a small thing.
It didn’t have to be this way,
Volkov continues. “Russia had a month” advanced notice to get ready because of the
crises in China and Italy. But it didn’t
even though it could have done so.
Isolating the country would have been easy because in 2019, the number
of Russians travelling abroad only equaled that of Australians, whose country
has far fewer people.
“In addition to time, distance and
the low mobility of the population,” Russia had other advantages that might
have allowed it to blunt the pandemic: its population density is far lower than
in Europe and the Russian population’s “tolerance for limitations and other ‘tightening
of the screws’” is far higher.
One can invoke many factors to
explain the failure of the Kremlin to take action, Volkov says. But two are “fundamental”
ones: the desire of the regime to continue without change its policy of using the
knout without offering anything positive in return and, more important, Putin’s
obsession with lengthening his own time in office via constitutional
amendments.
“Russia’s failure in the struggle with
the coronavirus was preordained on January 15, 2020, when Vladimir Putin first
publicly indicated that lifetime rule is his political strategy and
consequently made voting on the constitution the most important political
project for the Kremlin this year.”
All of March was “lost” as a result because
“Putin passesd through the five states of denial, anger, deal making,
depression and the adoption literally before our eye son TV” as “the Kremlin
and the Presidential Administration though only about how to save the April voting.”
And thus, they and the country lost “priceless time.”
In March it would have been possible
to prepare a defense and put it in place, Volkov says. It would have been
possible to impose a quarantine and various economic measures. It would have
been possible to choose from among the paths others chose, the Germans, the
Swedes, the Koreans or the Australians.
“Any strategy would have been better
than its absence,” the political activist says. “But the Russian powers simply
did nothing, and they and we have received what we have received.” And that is
something that it is long past time for Russians to recognize and draw
conclusions about.
“Vladimir Putin arranged the epidemic
of the coronavirus in Russia because he betrayed the interests of its citizens,
giving priority to his own political project over the priority of security,
health and well-being of Russians.”
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