Putin Suggests More Testing Needed to Ensure Russian Vaccine Safe and Effective

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – Despite international reporting that Russia now has a vaccine ready for use, Vladimir Putin told a teleconference on the epidemiological situation there that Russian teams had made real progress but that more testing is needed to ensure that any vaccine used on the population will be both safe and effective (echo.msk.ru/blog/echomsk/2683965-echo/).

            The Kremlin leader said that the Russian healthcare system has been performing admirably, but his spokesman Dmitry Peskov had to defend the fact that Moscow officials have continued to shift senior healthcare managers from one part of the country to another as entirely normal rather than disruptive (regnum.ru/news/3023031.html).

            Some Russian commentators were even more dismissive of the Western reports. Konstantin Yemeshin, a medical specialist, said that talk about the vaccine is intended to “calm public opinion” now even  though “it is no secret that the development of any vaccine requires years” (https://regnum.ru/news/3022837.html).

            The two Russian corporate teams were divided on messaging, with one predicting a vaccine in two weeks (versia.ru/vakcina-ot-koronavirusa-mozhet-postupit-v-grazhdanskij-oborot-15-avgusta) while the other said it was unlikely before the end of this year or early next (regnum.ru/news/3023021.html, regnum.ru/news/3022987.html and regnum.ru/news/3022979.html).

            Putin’s words suggest that the latter assessment likely is the more realistic; but Russians and others will certainly continue to push for an earlier launch especially as experts are now saying that immunity among those who have been infected lasts only a few months and not longer as many had hoped (regnum.ru/news/3023119.html).

            Russian officials reported 5 475 new cases of infection in the last 24 hours, bringing the pandemic total to 828,990, and 169 new deaths, upping that toll to 13,673 (zona.media/chronicle/krnjl). The media also reported senior officials are increasingly among the victims (regnum.ru/news/3022601.html and regnum.ru/news/3022561.html).

            The situation in Moscow continue to improve but elsewhere there have been spikes in the numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths, forcing officials to restore some earlier restrictions that had been dropped. Elsewhere, officials have continued to loosen these (regnum.ru/news/3022719.html and ura.news/articles/1036280739).

            Economic news was limited but mixed. On the one hand, banks reported that “almost 90 percent” of the loans they have extended since the pandemic began are in trouble and may have to be written off (rbc.ru/finances/29/07/2020/5f2027a69a7947ccfe00dd77?from=column_32). But on the other, the Duma approved a third tranche of aid for families with children under 16 (capost.media/news/obshchestvo/the-state-duma-approved-a-repetition-of-the-payment-in-10-thousand-roubles-in-august/).

            Also today, some Russian analysts suggested that the pandemic and the impact it has had on the raw materials export model of the Russian economy may force Russia to change and that such changes will benefit the country and its people in the future (mk.ru/economics/2020/07/29/koronavirus-stal-dvigatelem-progressa.html).

Post-Soviet Space Dissolving as Result of Generational Change, Sokolov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – When the USSR disintegrated almost 30 years ago, a post-Soviet space continued both within the Russian Federation and across much of what had been the Soviet Union because their leaders remained “in essence, part of the Soviet nomenklatura, criminal structures, and special services,” Denis Sokolov says.

            But now, this is changing, in part because of generational change and in part because the Kremlin continues to take steps that accelerate the final splitting apart of the area, the Russian scholar now based at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies argues (trtrussian.com/mnenie/putin-imperskie-ambicii-ili-borba-za-rejting-2363989).

            “The new urban dwellers in Tbilisi, in Yerevan, in Kyiv, in Minsk and in Moscow, Khabarovsk and Magas,” he tells Izabella Yevloyeva, the founding editor of Ingushetia’s Fortanga portal, “does not want to put up with this nomenklatura behind whom stand Putin, Timchenko, the Rottenbergs and other members of the Petersburg ‘collective.’”

            And their desire to turn away from that past has been intensified by Putin’s statements and actions such as his loose talk about the need for changing the borders of many of these countries in Russia’s favor.  Describing part of their lands as “gifts that haven’t been paid for is not a very good idea,” Sokolov says. It only reminds people of the Soviet approach.

            “If the Putin regime wants to stop the disintegration of its political space,” Sokolov continues, it will have to adopt an entirely different line given that there is a new generation coming to power across the region, a generation that doesn’t think looking to Moscow is its first if not only responsibility.

            “The maintenance of normal ties with the countries of the post-Soviet space,” the analyst continues, “is an important geopolitical task both for Russia and for its neighbors because this is a zone of their strategic economic and political interests.”  But such positive relations will not arise as long as Moscow insists on acting as if it can issue diktats to all the others.

            Whatever tactical successes the Kremlin may have achieved with that approach, Sokolov suggests, are more than outweighed by the strategic failure to develop good-neighborly relations.” 

Kochesokov, the Golunov of the North Caucasus, Facing Ten Years Behind Bars

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 28 – Martin Kochesokov, the Circassian activist who was arrested on the same day as Moscow journalist Ivan Golunov now faces up to ten years in prison because the authorities planted drugs on him just as they did on Golunov but the powers that be do not face the united opposition of his colleagues that forced them to drop charges and release Golunov. 

            In an interview yesterday, Kochesokov says that his tragedy and that of the Circassians is that Russian officials appointed by Moscow to run their affairs have gotten used to the idea that they can do anything they want, including make people simply disappear; and they are less responsive than officials in Moscow (meduza.io/feature/2020/07/27/esli-ne-sbavlyu-aktivnost-menya-voobsche-ne-naydut).

            Nonetheless, the Golunov case shook them as far as their treatment of him has been concerned. “At meetings in defense of Golunov, people came out with placards about me. There were also pickets in Cherkessk, Daghestan, Europe, Moscow and abroad where there is a Circassian diaspora. And more than 200 people assembled at the time of [Kochesokov’s] trial.” 

            Because of that, the Circassian activist says, he was allowed to await trial under house arrest rather than behind bars. That shows, Kochesokov says, that the powers that be are less certain of their position now than they have been in the past. They certainly still feel more free to act as they like than do their counterparts in Moscow but not as free as they did earlier.

            Kochesokov has been identified as a political prisoner whom the powers are using their beloved tactics of planting drugs and falsifying testimony and judicial decisions. He now faces up to ten years in jail. But he may escape that fate if all Circassians and all people of good will regardless of nationality speak out now.

            No one thought that Golunov would be released, but that happened. If we speak out now, there is a chance that the same thing can happen to Kochesokov. He deserves no less.