Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 11 – Vladimir Putin
has been pushing hard to reopen Russia and restart the economy, but his real
judgment about the nature of the coronavirus is that so far he has not come out
of his heavily protected residence which Russians are now referring to as “the
bunker” (novayagazeta.ru/news/2020/06/11/162247-putin-ne-stal-vozvraschatsya-k-obychnomu-rezhimu-raboty-posle-otmeny-samoizolyatsii-v-moskve).
This
has not done his image any good, and today his spokesman Dmitry Peshkov was
forced to say to the media that Putin plans to resume his normal schedule soon,
although he acknowledged that the Kremlin leader hasn’t yet and did not give a
date. The longer this goes on, the fewer
Russians are going to view Putin as the heroic figure he imagines himself to
be.
The
pandemic continues with officials reporting 8779 new cases of infection
bringing that total over half a million to 502,436 and 174 more deaths bringing
that total to 6532 (t.me/COVID2019_official/786). But confidence
in those numbers and especially the latter was undercut by two development.
On the one hand, Rosstat put up and
then took down new death rate data which called that total into question (echo.msk.ru/blog/echomsk/2658594-echo/ and
echo.msk.ru/news/2658814-echo.html).
And on the other, the WHO urged Russia to review its methods of calculating and
reporting deaths from the pandemic (mbk-news.appspot.com/news/voz-posovetoval/).
Moreover,
the Russian health ministry reported that the epidemiological situation had
improved in fewer than a quarter of all federal subjects and remains the same
or has even deteriorated in the others (mbk-news.appspot.com/suzhet/koronavirus-v-rossii-xronika/), a
pattern confirmed by reports from various regions (e.g., ria.ru/20200611/1572808074.html).
And the celebration of Victory Day
next week to which Putin has devoted so much attention may be in trouble.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has urged residents of the capital to stay home (live.russia.tv/channel/3), and more cities
have cancelled their parades because of
the epidemiological situation locally (znak.com/2020-06-11/desyat_krupnyh_rossiyskih_gorodov_otkazalis_ot_parada_pobedy_24_iyunya_iz_za_koronavirusa).
The economic news was bad at both
the micro and macro level. Every sixth Russian now can’t afford to buy meat to
eat (vedomosti.ru/business/characters/2020/06/10/832357-menshe-est-lyudi). Sixty percent
of companies say they may not reopen after the crisis or will do so only if
they get aid (agoniya.eu/archives/6021 and business-gazeta.ru/article/471597).
And
to top off everything else, there are growing indications that officials have
no plans to reduce the monitoring devices they put in place during the pandemic
after it ends, a rospect that tired and angry Russians are ever less pleased
about (ura.news/articles/1036280412 and knife.media/corona-end/).
Moscow officials report that 17.4 percent of the city’s residents have antibodies for the coronavirus (ria.ru/20200611/1572806275.html).
·
Russian
museums will be allowed to reopen later this summer but visitors will be
required to wear masks (rospotrebnadzor.ru/files/news/МР0194музеи.PDF).
·
Ninth
and eleventh graders will be allowed to graduate without taking the usual state
examinations but those who want to go on to higher educations will have to take
them later (ria.ru/20200611/1572785391.html).
·
Prosecutors in Birobidzhan say that jailors there may
be subject to criminal sanctions for exposing prisoners to the coronavirus (mbk-news.appspot.com/suzhet/koronavirus-za-reshetkoj/)
·
Regions which
have reopened have seen a spike in infections but as yet little increase in
economic activity (meduza.io/feature/2020/06/11/v-rossii-stanet-bolshe-bednyh-i-bezrabotnyh-iz-za-koronavirusa-a-gosudarstvennye-mery-podderzhki-hot-komu-to-pomogli).
·
Moscow Mayor Sobyanin says the city
will be ready to give residents shots if and when a vaccine becomes available (rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=87625).
No comments:
Post a Comment