Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 14 – Vladimir Putin
says that despite everything, Russia has come through the pandemic with minimal
losses and confidence that everything is going to get better in the future, the
result of the willingness of Russians to do what the president tells them and
thus a sharp contrast to the disastrous situation in the US.
There, Putin says, Donald Trump
gives instructions but the states and localities do what they want, the culmination
of the campaign by Democrats who lost to Trump in 2016 to do everything they
can to impede his work and undermine his rule (meduza.io/news/2020/06/14/putin-rossiya-vyhodit-iz-epidemii-koronavirusa-s-minimalnymi-poteryami-a-v-ssha-tak-ne-proishodit).
But data from Russia, including those
collected and issued by his own officials, undercut Putin’s claims about the
situation in the Russian Federation and show that the pandemic there is far
from over and that the Russian economy is likely to remain in deep trouble for
several years to come.
In the last 24 hours, 8835 more
Russians were infected by the coronavirus, bringing the cumulative total to
528,964; and 119 more people died, pushing that total to 6948 (t.me/COVID2019_official/815). And
experts pointed out that those figures are roughly the same and do not indicate
any trend toward improvement.
The number of Russians infected by
the coronavirus has remained between 8,000 and 9,000 in recent days, they say;
and consequently it is “still too early to speak about the end of the pandemic”
(versia.ru/za-sutki-v-rossii-vyyavleno-8835-novyx-sluchaev-zarazheniya-koronavirusom-chislo-smertej-priblizilos-k-7-tysyacham).
Moreover,
officials are talking about the measures they may take if things get worse
rather than assuming as Putin does that everything is going to get better. If
the situation improves, they will lift some restrictions; if it doesn’t, they
won’t until they see evidence that the pandemic is fading.
Health
Minister Mikhail Murashko adds that the situation with regard to the
coronavirus “is constantly changing,” sometimes getting better and sometimes
worse. He urges Russians not to make plans for vacations that they cannot
cancel, hardly a recommendation consistent with Putin’s line.
And
in some places the situation truly is getting worse even now. Oleg Ergashev,
deputy governor of St. Petersburg, says his city’s hospitals don’t have enough
beds to handle the influx of new cases and that infection rates there show that
the pandemic isn’t showing signs of ending (topspb.tv/news/2020/06/14/oleg-ergashev-situaciya-s-koronavirusom-v-peterburge-ostaetsya-slozhnoj/).
The economic news, Putin
notwithstanding, isn’t good either. Oil prices and demand continue to be low,
and gas prices and demand are projected to fall over the next year, leaving the
Russian government without one of its most important sources of revenue (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/77271 and
krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/77244).
Meanwhile, other pandemic-related news from
Russia this Sunday includes
·
The
Russian government says that when hotels reopen they must verify that the
people checking into the same room are in fact related, a requirement that may be
popular with Putin’s base but won’t be with many Russians (rg.ru/2020/06/13/kak-budut-zaseliat-v-nomera-pary-bez-shtampa-v-pasporte.html).
·
In
some isolated North Caucasus resorts, visitors are able to self-isolate but
continue to act as if nothing were required (kavkazr.com/a/30669884.html).
·
One
Russian chemist says that Russians can’t be infected by the coronavirus while
in pools because of special chemicals that will kill the virus before it can be
transmitted (hmk.ru/social/2020/06/14/ekspert-ocenil-riski-zarazheniya-koronavirusom-v-basseyne.html).
·
Tatarstan
calculates that more than a third of the republic’s people would have to be
exposed to the virus before the population could achieve collective immunity (business-gazeta.ru/article/471819).
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