Paul Goble
Staunton, May 8 – The Putin regime’s
failure to provide adequate support for Russians it has ordered to remain at
home in order to stop the spread of the pandemic and the shortcomings of the Russian
medical system as a result of that regime’s healthcare “optimization” have
attracted much attention.
But the treatment the Russian
occupation forces in Crimea have meted out to the residents of the Ukrainian peninsula
and especially to the Crimean Tatars has been far worse, mitigated only by the
fact that the numbers of infections there is still much smaller than in Moscow
and other Russian cities.
Instead of providing assistance or
medical care to the people of Crimea, Kseniya Kirillova says in a commentary for
Region.Expert, the occupation authorities have responded to the crisis by
stepping up their monitoring of the population lest it protest and by repression
whether it does or not (region.expert/covid-crimea/).
This approach builds on the one that
the occupiers have been following since the beginning. To open the way for bringing
in doctors from Russia, the occupation worked long and hard to discredit local
doctors as a prelude to cutting their pay and making their continued presence impossible,
the US-based Russian journalist says (ru.krymr.com/a/28569093.html).
As
a result, the healthcare system in Crimea was thrown back to a level even
behind that in the Russian Federation. Patients were assigned numbers in line
for treatment, and these lines were so long, activists on the peninsula say,
that many of them “simply haven’t stayed alive until a doctor can see them.”
The
coronavirus has made the situation worse but not yet led to its complete
collapse because the numbers of infected remain small, although they appear
likely to increase if Russians come from hotspots like Moscow for vacations in
the south. In that event, Crimeans say,
the healthcare system there will disintegrate.
In
occupied Crimea, there are no masks available for sale “or they are so expensive”
that no one can afford them given that people aren’t working and bringing in
incomes.
But
as bad as things are for the general population in Crimea, the situation with
regard to the Crimean Tatars now being detained by the powers that be is far
worse, Kirillova continues. Some have
high temperatures and a cough but aren’t even being tested to see if they have
the virus and need treatment.
Those
held in prison colonies in Crimea “do not have even elementary means of
defense, masks or disinfectants,” and “tests for the new virus are not
conducted there” at all, she reports.
What the Russian occupiers care about is defending Russian troops now on
the peninsula “but not the local population.” (On that, see ru.krymr.com/a/gibridnaya-voyna-rossii-protiv-ukrainy-prodolzhitsay-expert/30565531.html.)
Because of rising
fears and anger about the situation, the occupation authorities have reason to
fear that there may be protests of one kind or another, and to forestall that,
they have invested not in means to help the population but rather to monitor
its movements in much the same way that the city of Moscow has, Kirillova adds.
Yet another factor contributing to
rising tensions in Crimea is that because of sanctions, Crimean residents
cannot make use of the Internet resources and employment that others can. As a
result, the residents of the occupied Ukrainian peninsula are left with both
fewer opportunities and less hope that they will be able to avoid an explosion
in the number of infections.
As far as one can tell, the
occupiers care far less about that than about protests; and so the people of Crimea
and the Crimean Tatars in particular are likely to suffer not only from the
pandemic itself but from increased repression because of the assumptions and
concerns of Moscow and its occupiers.
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