Russia has ‘Lost the Battle with Covid,’ Russian Political Scientist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 28 – Russia’s dysfunctional state and its degraded society have “lost the battle with the coronavirus” and will continue to take losses from that fight over the next several years unless in the unlikely event radical changes occur, Sergey Medvedev, a political scientist and commentator says.

            All “the myths” about the strengths of Russia’s authoritarian state” have been shown to be hollow given its “complete dysfunction” in this case, he argues. The Putinist state “is capable of ensuring only one thing – its own survival – but it is catastrophically unable to protect its population” from this global threat (znak.com/2021-10-28/rossiyskiy_istorik_zayavil_chto_strana_proigrala_borbu_s_koronavirusom_i_nazval_prichiny).

            Kremlin leaders today have withdrawn to their bunkers just as Stalin did to the dacha in June 1941, Medvedev continues. “The bosses are afraid to introduce a quarantine without an order from above … the doctors either heroically cover the breakthroughs with their own bodies or themselves disseminate anti-vax notions.”

            And Russian vaccines “either are sent to distant countries with unclear geopolitical goals or quietly allowed to sit in medical cabinets,” while people buy fake certificates about vaccinations, all things the state should be doing something about but continues to fail to do. But the state is not the only part of Russia that has “shamefully capitulated.”

            Alongside the state in terms of failure is “the majority of the population,” Medvedev says. “One of the causes of this is that the authorities and their propaganda for a long time have disseminated fakes about viruses and vaccines for Western publics and now these fakes have returned to Russia.”

            But that is not the only cause, the political scientist continues. Also playing a major role is the pathetic state of Russian society, its lack of solidarity or the ability to think for itself about its own state and that of others in it, something with deep historical roots. As a result, its members are not able to act even to defend themselves.

            As a result, what is happening in Russia today is “the joint defeat of the powers and society, which beautifully reinforce one another in this deadly self-destructive tango,” a dance certain to go on unless something changes radically into 2022 and 2023 at a minimum and quite possibly for even longer.