Russians Think Battle Against Coronavirus has Been Won But Fear a Second Wave and Economic Hardships are Ahead

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 10 – Buoyed by Vladimir Putin’s upbeat statements and the lifting of some restrictions in Moscow and other places, most Russians believe that their country has won the battle against the coronavirus but fear that they are likely to suffer economic hardships in the near term and that a second wave of the pandemic may occur.

            That is what polls show (vz.ru/politics/2020/6/10/1044282.html). These surveys also show that Russians by large margins expect the government to come to their assistance after the referendum on the constitutional amendments. If that doesn’t happen, it is entirely possible that popular attitudes will turn even more negative on the government and Putin personally.

            There is another risk here as well. Officials have released data showing that the number of coronavirus cases in the Russian capital fell dramatically after Mayor Sergey Sobyanin lifted some restrictions (meduza.io/short/2020/06/10/kolichestvo-novyh-sluchaev-zabolevaniya-covid-19-v-moskve-do-i-posle-otmeny-samoizolyatsii).

            Such reports ignore the fact that any rise in the number of cases after reopening, something experts say will occur only two weeks later; but they are likely to lead to people being less careful than they were and to seek testing less often than they did, actions that may lead to a short-term improvement in the figures but make an upsurge or even second wave more likely.

            Over the last 24 hours, there were 8404 officially confirmed new cases of the coronaviurs in 83 federal subjects, bringing the overall total to 493,657. There were 216 more deaths, bringing that total to 6358. Moscow continued to have the most cases but not the highest rates. Those were in the North Caucasus (t.me/COVID2019_official/777).

            Skepticism about the official numbers is rampant. There will be more after Moscow officials published a report saying that there were nearly 6,000 more deaths in the city in May this year than in the same period a year ago, an increase of 58 percent rise that likely reflects the pandemic (mosgorzdrav.ru/ru-RU/news/default/card/4122.html).

            The Kremlin has decided to address this skepticism directly. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN that people in the West when talking about Russian losses have failed to consider that “the system of health care in Russia is more effective” than those in the West (edition.cnn.com/2020/06/09/europe/russia-peskov-interview-intl/index.html).

            Russians are beginning to discover that opening up is going to take a long time and will involve many and varied steps.  Moscow Mayor Sobyanin has said that reopening the city will take at least 75 days and that even when it is reopened, people there like elsewhere in Russia, should continue to wear masks until a vaccine is developed (youtube.com/watch?v=fvj_6OsnvwE, sovross.ru/news/49024  and kp.ru/daily/27140/4233289/).

            Elsewhere, where they have been moves to reopen, this has been accompanied by and led to sparks of new cases that have overwhelmed the capacity of existing hospitals (ru.chuvash.org/news/5278.html, forcing officials to reverse course and impose tighter controls once again (ru.chuvash.org/news/5279.html).

            And in the North Caucasus, many are worried that the desire of Muslims to return to services is undermining efforts to contain the pandemic. Indeed, some officials there are saying bluntly that these religious attachments are to blame for the spread of the coronavirus (https://kavtoday.ru/article/5445).

            News on the economic front was uniformly bad. Russian banks are in increasing trouble because of bad debts and are struggling to refinance (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/77134,  krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/77136 and vedomosti.ru/partner/articles/2020/06/10/831292-krizis-menyaet). Unemployment is continuing to rise and Moscow has made it easier for firms to dismiss workers during the pandemic (rbc.ru/economics/10/06/2020/5edfa0829a79472ef3375801).

            A typical Russian response to all this was offered by Siberian writer Mark Blok who said that he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about Putin’s “stupid” decisions to reopen the country so quickly so people could vote to allow him to remain president for life (babr24.com/msk/?IDE=201528).

            Meanwhile, other pandemic-related stories from Russia today include:

·         Fourteen percent of Russians now have immunity to the coronavirus, consumer protection officials say (mbk-news.appspot.com/suzhet/koronavirus-v-rossii-xronika/  and interfax.ru/russia/712617).

·         The supreme lama of Tyva has been put in an artificial coma in the course of treatment for a coronavirus infection (tass.ru/sibir-news/8691747).

·         Putin has taken direct charge of Russian Tourism to promote domestic travel in the wake of the pandemic (kavtoday.ru/article/5444).

·         Former president Dmitry Medvedev says he expects a rise in crime among immigrant workers who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic-related restrictions (nazaccent.ru/content/33352-medvedev-boitsya-rosta-prestupnosti-sredi-migrantov.html).