How Putin's Russia Bungled the Pandemic
The rapid spread of Covid-19 has strained a Russian health system that’s suffering from poor funding and incomplete post-Soviet reforms.
Intensive care.
Photographer: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP
It’s been an uncomfortably swift rise to the top of the coronavirus tables for President Vladimir Putin. From only a handful of Covid-19 cases in early March, Russia now has more than 290,000 of them and a rate of new infections that puts it second only to the U.S. — a country with more than twice as many people.
Few governments have made a success of managing the epidemic. Yet the rapid spread of the illness has exposed a Russian health system that’s suffering from poor funding, incomplete reforms that neglected much of the country, and a misguided attempt to replace imports of drugs and medical equipment with local production — at least until two ventilators caught fire and killed patients. An authoritarian regime that dislikes bad news and fuels disinformation hasn’t helped.