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It seems that Vladimir Putin has run out of patience with the coronavirus.
On Monday, it sent millions of workers back to factories and construction sites across Russia, declaring six weeks of total closure.
Regional leaders have been left to handle exactly how and when they lift the remaining restrictions, with the infection rate still stubbornly high, especially in Moscow.
But by Thursday, Putin was telling his government that life was “resuming its normal, family rhythm” and urging them to refocus on non-coronavirus priorities.
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AFP
People started working in Moscow this week, but many have stayed home.
The message from above is clear: the President of Russia wants to move on.
Why the rush?
“I think that for the first time in his active political life, Putin is facing a problem that is not under his control and that he broke all his plans,” says Chatham House political analyst Nikolai Petrov.
This spring, which included a public vote on the reform of the constitution, which allowed Putin to rule on two other terms.
Instead, the 67-year-old man ended up retiring to his residence on the outskirts of Moscow, after an attempt to maintain his image as a man of action by visiting a coronavirus hospital in a hazardous materials suit became a close scratch with the infection.
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Denis Protsenko became ill with Covid-19 a week after circling the President, here in his hazardous materials suit.
The doctor who showed him around then tested positive for the virus.
Tucked away in self-isolation, the hands-on president has been forced to conduct business through videoconferencing on a giant split screen.
At 59%, his approval rating has dropped to a record low and his irritation, even boredom, during long calls has been visible.
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Reuters
Putin has had to get used to video conferencing
“Putin is eager to finish his plans,” argues Nikolai Petrov, which means the constitutional reform vote that is still widely advertised on state television and billboards in giant cities.
“It’s like he was caught in the middle of a jump over a fence. It is not a very comfortable position.”
So is Covid-19 really defeated?
The day that Vladimir Putin announced the formal end of the blockade, Russia saw its biggest increase in new coronavirus cases.
Since then, official numbers have declined slightly each day, but the total now exceeds 250,000, putting Russia near the top of the world rankings.
However, politicians here have preferred to highlight another statistic: a mortality rate below 1%.
“This shows that the quality of our medical care is much better than in the United States,” Parliament Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin gloated when Russia reported only 2,212 deaths from coronavirus.
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“We must thank our doctors and our president, who works day and night to save lives,” he said enthusiastically, to applause from parliamentarians, mainly wearing face masks.
The low mortality has raised some skeptical eyebrows, but the suggestion that Russia is actively underestimating the deaths was angered by officials this week as “false news.”
However, figures for the overall death rate in Moscow in April suggest excess mortality of up to three times the official Covid-19 death toll, calculated against an average rate over the past five years.
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Last month, ambulances had to queue at the entrance of a medical clinic in Moscow
Excess mortality is considered a better measure of Covid-19 deaths, since it includes people who may not have been tested and those who die outside the hospital.
With around 1,700 excess deaths, Moscow’s count in April was still considerably lower than in many places, including London.
Since then, the Moscow Department of Health clarified that up to 60% of suspected coronavirus cases actually died from other causes, such as strokes or heart attacks, a fact established during the post-mortem examination.
Deny any cover-up.
What lessons have been learned?
Russia had more time to prepare for the coronavirus.
Widespread testing, now more than 40,000 a day in Moscow, early detection, and earlier hospital treatment may be helping Russia avoid the harrowing mass grave and overburdened morgues scenes that developed in parts of Europe, though the epidemic here it is far from being contained yet.
There may also be cultural differences: While UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson coughed during remote meetings with a raging temperature only to end up in intensive care, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman battled his own fever for three days before being admitted to the hospital with double pneumonia.
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Dmitry Peskov was admitted to the hospital this week
In an interview with the Kommersant newspaper, Dmitry Peskov describes the disease despite extreme precautions at work, where Kremlin staff disinfects paperwork before passing it on.
Peskov said he had not been in direct contact with President Putin himself for more than a month.
Delegating responsibility
It is unclear when the Russian leader might consider it safe to return to the Kremlin.
Many others in Moscow also continue to “work from home” as most of the Covid-19 restrictions remain in place.
It is the mayor’s responsibility to decide when they will be up and Sergei Sobyanin still refuses even to let residents go for a daily run.
On Thursday, he described such decisions as the most difficult he has ever made. The price, he said, was “people’s health and lives.”
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That is less about frustrated runners than the many workers who now struggle.
Official unemployment has doubled since the start of the epidemic, and the independent Levada survey this month found that one in four people had lost or was in immediate danger of losing their job.
Their wages or hours were reduced to a third.
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Reuters
The virus is still spreading beyond Moscow, although the number of daily infections has slightly decreased.
Russians do not save much, and state grants to locked-in workers have been limited, so pressure is mounting to ease the restrictions.
“[Russia’s leaders] We know that the policy of not working and not making money will cause a collapse, an explosion. So they ruled the pandemic when it is far from the peak, “argues political analyst Lilia Shevtsova.
“They needed a victory over the coronavirus, and fast!” she blogged for the Ekho Moskvy radio station.
But the virus, which is still spreading to Russia’s regions, is foreign to the Kremlin’s political wishes.
And damage to the leader of Russia’s strongmen can also be difficult to stop.
“Even if he gets the vote on the constitution he wants,” argues Nikolai Petrov, “it will not change the fact that Putin is now much weaker.”
