Muscovites Call Sobyanin’s Coronavirus Policies ‘Genocidal’ and Want Him Out as Mayor

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 11 – Many Moscow residents not only have coronavirus fatigue but are prepared to label the policies of Mayor Sergey Sobyanin to combat the pandemic as a form of “genocide” and to sign up to one of the various Facebook pages declaring that they don’t want him re-elected (newsru.com/russia/09oct2020/mskmetro.html and facebook.com/groups/SobianinNet/permalink/3361281167327195).

            Sobyanin for his part says he is trying to keep new restrictions at a minimum,  describing his approach as “the lite variant” (rbc.ru/society/11/10/2020/5f829c539a7947e32b399912). But other governors, like Andrey Vorobyev of neighboring Moscow oblast say that their chief goal is to block a quarantine (rbc.ru/society/11/10/2020/5f82a7529a7947e60b302d54).

            One Sobyanin policy that is already failing is his imposition of a requirement that firms send a minimum of 30 percent of their employees to work at home. Superjob.ru says that only 50 percent of Moscow companies will do so because of resistance and technical difficulties (ehorussia.com/new/node/21866).

            With new records of infection being set each day, many Russians are angry, and one commentator has suggested that the pandemic, having left millions without work, increased inequality, and exacerbated social tensions is by itself generating political instability (ehorussia.com/new/node/21874).

            Infections continue to increase and for the first time ever passed 13,000 a day. The central monitoring office registered 13,634 new cases of infection and 149 additional deaths, raising the totals for those measures respectively to 1,298,718 and 22,5 97 (t.me/COVID2019_official/1717).

            Moscow remains a hotspot but beyond the ring road, the pandemic continues to ebb and flow, with some officials predicting that the peak is near and others saying that it will occur only sometime later (versia.ru/virusolog-pik-zabolevaemosti-covid-19-v-rossii-mozhet-nastupit-cherez-nedelyu, ura.news/news/1052453625, kp.ru/daily/217193.5/4301980/

 and regnum.ru/news/society/3082765.html).

A Moscow conference of the All-Russian Parents Resistance denounced the closing of classes and entire schools to fight the pandemic and suggested that distance learning was something the authorities have long wanted to do and are only using the coronavirus as a cover (regnum.ru/news/3086945.html).

Russian officials have continued to stress that getting a vaccine will be entirely voluntary, but a new investigation has found that in the rush to produce the medication, the government compelled those employed by the state to take part in the trials (newizv.ru/news/politics/11-10-2020/ukolotsya-po-prikazu-kogo-prinuzhdayut-delat-privivki-ot-koronavirusa).

Medical experts announced that those who are overweight are more likely to die from the coronavirus than others (regnum.ru/news/3086866.html).

On the economic front, one  Russian Academy of Economics and State Service expert predicts that in the coming months, as a result of the pandemic and the collapse of the oil and gas markets, Russian incomes could fall by as much as two-thirds (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/80765).

Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related developments in Russia today,

·         Despite or perhaps because of the pandemic, Russians are now purchasing automobiles and especially imported ones, industry sources say (regnum.ru/news/3086975.html).

·         Prices for basic foodstuffs are continuing to rise (ura.news/news/1052453632).

·         And Russians are now reading psychology books at twice the rate they did before the pandemic (thinktanks.by/publication/2020/10/11/pandemiya-sdelala-knigi-po-psihologii-v-dva-raza-populyarnee.html).