PoliticoAs Russia’s coronavirus casualties mount, Putin keeps a low profile
- The outbreak has come at a sensitive time for the Russian president
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Marc Bennetts on politico.com on April 15, 2020.
A month on, the joking has stopped, and the Kremlin’s tone is very different.
Russia may still have fewer reported coronavirus cases than many Western countries with much smaller populations, but there has been a sharp increase since March 23, when the health ministry stripped away red tape that had made it harder for doctors to verify positive tests. The move came after Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, told Putin in a televised meeting that official health ministry statistics were wildly inaccurate.
As of April 15, Russia has 24,490 confirmed infections and 198 coronavirus-related deaths, the vast majority of them in Moscow. And officials are concerned that things are about to get much worse.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said this week that hospitals were experiencing a “huge influx” of coronavirus patients. Videos posted on social media at the weekend showed massive lines of ambulances waiting to deliver patients to a hospital near Moscow. One ambulance driver said he had queued for 15 hours.