Russia will Find It Easier to Overcome Pandemic than End Dependence on Oil and Gas Exports in Post-Covid World, Stolypin Forum Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 11 – As difficult a task as overcoming the coronavirus pandemic is for Russia, participants in Moscow’s Stolypin Forum say, Moscow faces a much more difficult challenge in ending its dependence on oil and gas exports now that ever more countries are developing other energy sources (ng.ru/economics/2021-09-09/100_09092021_reality.html).

            This shift, the analysts say, will drive prices for oil and gas lower, thus depriving the Russian government of revenues now and in the future and ultimately will mean that Moscow will have to turn away from its reliance on this income stream by developing other industrial sectors to earn its way in the world.

            Today, Russian officials reported registering 18,891 new cases of infection and 796 new deaths from the coronavirus over the past 24 hours as the pandemic continues to ebb and flow across the Russian Federation (t.me/COVID2019_official/3540 and regnum.ru/news/society/3361504.html).

            Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova reported that 46.5 million Russians have had at least one dose of the vaccine, while 39.8 million have had the complete sequence of two shots (regnum.ru/news/3367426.html).

            Aleksandr Gintsburg of the Gamaley Research Center said that Sputnik-5 is more effective against the delta strain of the coronavirus than any Western vaccine, and he also said that there has not been a single death associated with the Russian vaccine against covid (rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/613b89069a794771a3922845 and regnum.ru/news/3367351.html).

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

·         Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that the city’s economy had recovered to the point that it is now larger than it was in the pre-pandemic year of 2019 (echo.msk.ru/news/2902038-echo.html).

·         URA news is reporting that the interior ministry has banned its officers from travelling abroad, citing the pandemic as the cause (ura.news/news/1052504414).

·         Turkey has decided not to recognize those who have been inoculated with Sputnik-Lite as  vaccinated and will impose restrictions on those seeking entry into that country (tass.ru/obschestvo/12357509).