How the coronavirus is testing Putin’s hegemony in Russia | World

Confinement to prevent the spread of coronavirus has forced the company to close its coffee chain to the public, and the business is struggling to keep going. But its owner, Anastasia Tatulova, says the state is doing nothing to help.

So when he came face to face with the President of Russia, he couldn’t help it. “I will try to ask for his help without crying, but this is really a tragedy,” he told Vladimir Putin last month, adding that the “half measures” of support were not enough.

When the covid-19 restrictions began to take effect and the companies laid off their employees, Tatulova was in the front row of employers in a meeting with the president. Her passionate 12-minute speech was shown live on state television. “At the time, I just needed to be heard,” the businesswoman tells the BBC.

She says she hardly sleeps today, constantly thinking of ways to survive. “I thought I would understand. But it did not work, and the government measures are not enough. We have to handle this alone.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that the world will face its worst global recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and Russia’s economy will not be immune.

Neither are his politicians, including Putin, who has been in power for more than 20 years and whom his critics accuse of having buried democracy and wielding power in a “pharaonic” way.

During his long term, the president created the image of a leader who brought Russia out of post-Soviet chaos and brought order and prosperity.

Putin planned to use that brand of “stability” by holding a national referendum this week to amend the constitution and pave the way for staying in power for two more terms. But the vote was postponed due to the risks of discussing it at the height of a pandemic.

Now, some problems are around the president. “The condescending Russian state cannot keep its promises. It has not helped people, it has not helped companies,” says Andrei Kolesnikov, of the expert group at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

And the fact is, most state aid goes to big companies, which have more employees and are more decisive for the Russian economy and less critical of the president.

But that made others feel abandoned. “I cannot predict a catastrophe for this regime, (but) it is a serious challenge for Putin. The pandemic is more efficient than the political opposition and the protesters,” says Kolesnikov.

There are already some signs that this frustration is spreading to other regions of Russia, as well as to the virus.

Last Monday, hundreds of people in the southern city of Vladikavkaz took to the streets to protest the confinement. The regional government offers only 3 thousand rubles (R $ 225) to those who lose their jobs.

There has also been an increase in online protests, in which people have shared messages “demanding” more help. “It seems like a huge failure for the government at the moment,” Nastya Mikhailova told the BBC.

The 29-year-old has just lost her job as an event manager and only has money for a few more weeks. “We are concerned,” she says.

But his case is far from the only one: the coronavirus is believed to leave some 8 million Russians unemployed.

Putin ordered an increase in aid to the unemployed, but only for a subsistence level.

As for the salary support for companies, Russia offers to cover about 12,000 rubles a month (R $ 900), a much lower amount than that offered by many governments in Europe. And that only applies if a company retains 90% of its employees, which is impossible for many smaller companies.

While struggling to pay his employees, the owner of a chain of gyms in Yekaterinburg expressed his annoyance in an online letter addressed to his team.

Alexei Romanov accused Vladimir Putin of being “obsessed” with his constitutional reform project rather than paying attention to the coronavirus crisis, and described Russia’s political class as “totally lost”.

“Government measures are not enough, they will not save us,” the businessman told the BBC. “I think they are showing incompetence. We can only trust ourselves.”