Putin Seeks Maximum Political Advantage from Promised Coronavirus Bonuses

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 28 – Vladimir Putin is seeking maximum political advantage from the bonuses he has promised healthcare workers by delaying the payout until early on the morning of the July 1 vote on the constitutional amendments (znak.com/2020-06-28/prf_otpravit_rossiyanam_novye_putinskie_vyplaty_rano_utrom_1_iyulya_v_posledniy_den_golosovaniya).

            Putin said today Russians should not dramatize the country’s problems but instead take pride in the fact that Russia today is taking care of itself rather than relying on handouts as in the 1990s (novayagazeta.ru/news/2020/06/28/162626-ya-by-zdes-nichego-ne-dramatiziroval-takoe-byvaet-putin-ob-yasnil-problemy-s-vyplatami-za-lechenie-patsientov-s-covid-19-chelovecheskim-faktorom and kp.ru/daily/27148.5/4243685/).

            Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova gave an equally upbeat assessment. The first six weeks of the pandemic were the hardest, she said during a television interview; but now things are getting better and better (ura.news/news/1052438362).

            Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that “nothing horrible” will happen when the country opens up, perhaps the case in his city where there are numerous hospitals to treat new cases but not in the regions where Putin’s optimization has left many places without facilities (znak.com/2020-06-28/sobyanin_posle_snyatiya_ogranicheniy_po_covid_19_v_moskve_nichego_uzhasnogo_ne_proizoshlo and krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/77707).

            Other officials announced that the testing of possible vaccines against the coronavirus was being speeded up in the hopes of having one available for the population in the next few months (versia.ru/v-rossii-za-sutki-vyyavlen-6791-sluchaj-zarazheniya-koronavirusom-i-104-letalnyx-isxoda).

            The central registry reported that Russia had registered 6791 new cases over the last 24 hours, bringing the cumulative total to 634.437. It also said that there had been 104 deaths from the coronavirus during that period, raising that total to 9.073 (стопкоронавирус.рф/information/). In some places, there were significant declines but in others, including occupied Crimea large increases (svobodaradio.livejournal.com/4471827.html).

            Because of declines in the number of cases or pressure from the powers and the people, “more than 70 Russian regions” will begin accepting tourists from other parts of the country as of July 1 (ren.tv/news/v-rossii/716901-mishustin-bolee-70-regionov-rossii-smogut-prinimat-turistov-s-1-iiulia). Infections in Tuva are spiking but not as much as some foreign outlets are saying, Russian commentators suggest (club-rf.ru/17/theme/533).

            In Sakhalin, officials have lifted the ban on mass meetings (eastrussia.ru/news/massovye-meropriyatiya-razreshili-provodit-na-sakhaline/), but elsewhere, restrictions can’t be easily lifted because there are no medical facilities to treat people or even water for them  to wash their hands regularly (severreal.org/a/30693850.html).

            The economy continued to sink, with Russians changing their habits in response, cutting back on consumption and increasing savings in case the situation becomes even worse, Russian economists and other experts say (ura.news/news/1052438365).

            Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related developments from Russia,

·         The government has decided to create a reserve of 300 million face masks (tass.ru/ekonomika/8841769).

·         Schools will reopen as planned on September 1, officials say (ura.news/news/1052438530).

·         Most of the several million Muscovites who fled the city at the start of the pandemic will eventually return but not before the end of the summer dacha season.  Some fraction, however, will remain beyond the ring road having discovered that they can do their work online just as well and live far more cheaply outside the city (rosbalt.ru/moscow/2020/06/28/1850804.html).

Russians Increasingly Angry that They Live in Poverty in a Country So Rich in Natural Resources

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 28 – The pandemic and associated economic crisis have exacerbated widespread anger among Russians that they live in poverty despite the enormous natural wealth of their country and its sale earlier abroad for more than six trillion US dollars. Had even a small part of that money gone to the people, there wouldn’t be 18.5 million poor in Russia.

            The Krizis-Kopilka portal, which carries stories about the pandemic and the economic crisis today presents a series of comments by ordinary Russians and by Moscow observers that underscore the growing sense that the situation in Putin’s Russia is unjust and unsustainable (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/77671).

            It sums up its findings with the following questions: “Why in one of the countries with the largest natural resources in the world do so many live in poverty? Why do developed countries in which there is no oil or gas live many times better than us according to the majority of indicators?”

            “Perhaps,” Krizis-Kopilka says, “this is because in developed countries, there exists political competition, regular changeover in the powers and honest elections which do not allow one ineffective individual (and his friends from the Ozero cooperative) to usurp power for 20 years.”

            Over the two decades Putin has been in power, the share of convinced patriots in Russia has fallen by almost half, from 84 percent to 46 percent; and it quotes Andrey Kolesnikov’s observation that the Putin era cannot show “a single achievement … All achievements are in the past.” And he has not given Russians anything to be proud of since he came to power.

            And it also cites the conclusion of Lev Gudkov that “general concern, dissatisfaction, fear and anger have intensified. And this has led to a heightened assessment of the probability of mass protest,” and more immediately, it has pushed up the share of Russians who think the country is headed in the wrong direction to more than half.

Protest Actions by Immigrant Workers Begin But So Far Only Outside Major Russian Cities

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 28 – When the pandemic began, many Moscow commentators suggested that its economic consequences, likely to hit immigrant workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus first, would lead to protest actions in Russia. When that didn’t happen in the capitals or other major cities, most concluded that the immigrants weren’t going to act.

            But that was myopic, Russian commentator Aleksandr Shustov says. Immigrant protests “have all the same begun” just not where the commentators expected but rather along the borders Moscow has closed to combat the coronavirus (ritmeurasia.org/news--2020-06-28--vystuplenija-migrantov-vse-zhe-nachalis-49678).

            There, he continues, a genuine “crisis” has emerged.

            The largest case of this was along the Russian-Azerbaijani border where two weeks ago, some 400 Azerbaijanis unable to return home clashed with police. Seven siloviki were wounded, and 93 participants were arrested after they sought to block a highway to call attention to their plight.

            But that is hardly the only such migrant protest. At the end of April, Tajiks clashed with police at a detention facility near Yekaterinburg in response to the same situation: They wanted to go home but couldn’t (tass.ru/ural-news/8345151). To prevent a repetition, the regional authorities organized a flight home on May 26 for most of those involved.

            Shustov reports that the embassies of the Central Asian countries are working to organize such flights, apparently fearful that if there is violence, workers from their countries won’t be able to return after the crisis and won’t be sending home essential transfer payments (asiaplustj.info/ru/news/tajikistan/society/20200623/posol-tadzhikistana-v-rossii-aviabileti-na-charteri-budut-prodavatsya-strogo-po-spisku and facebook.com/KyrgyzstanMFA/).

            This problem has been exacerbated by two other trends: On the one hand, many Russians believe that migrant workers are a source of crime; and on the other, reports about coronavirus deaths among the migrants have led many to conclude that the migrants are a major threat to the health of Russians (tj.sputniknews.ru/migration/20200623/1031457800/podrobnosti-smerti-migrant-dostavlennykh-Russia-Tajikistan.html and fergana.site/news/118485/).

            As serious as the consequences of these views and the clashes are to Russia, unemployment among those in Russia may have even more fateful ones. Financial transfers home by such workers have fallen by as much as 22 percent so far and are projected to fall far more when the May numbers are reported (fergana.site/news/119191/ and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/06/unemployment-among-migrants-in-russia.html).

            What will happen in the future when the pandemic ebbs remains unclear. In the short term, the problem of migrant unemployment and anger is the more important. In the longer term, especially if Russia tries to do without immigrant workers as some suggest, the impact of this loss of income on Central Asian countries could be their radical destabilization.