Putin Has Weathered Covid by Shifting Blame
Russia’s centralization has allowed the president to play a cynical political game.
Winning the Covid blame game?
Photographer: Dmitry Astakhov/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s methods of alleviating the economic damage from the Covid-19 pandemic have concentrated most of its resulting pain in the bigger cities, which traditionally have seen the highest protest activity. You would think that hurting the places most likely to complain would be a losing strategy. Yet this seeming miscalculation hasn’t noticeably undermined Putin’s hold on his country, because he’s managed to share out the blame.
The system Putin has built in Russia is highly centralized — more so than in other countries structured as federations. The trends in Russian government spending and borrowing this year illustrate how the centralization works.