ANALYSIS: Russia’s Botched Pandemic Response

The Shocking Enormity of Russia’s Botched Pandemic Response A massive third wave is spreading unchecked, anti-vaxxers are rampant, and the Kremlin’s vaccine diplomacy has failed. Stefan Theil Foreign Policy

MOSCOW—As I write this, Russia is firmly in the grip of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Every day, there are about 22,000 reported new infections—twice as many as during the peak of the first wave in May 2020—and more than 600 deaths. The new Delta variant of the virus, which Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin says is responsible for 90 per cent of new infections in the Russian capital, has caught Russia almost completely unawares. Despite having access to the brain power and resources of one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, Russian authorities have repeatedly squandered almost every chance to beat the pandemic. Their massive, bloated propaganda apparatus failed to do the one job it was designed for: Get the message out. Instead, the pandemic has exacerbated the crisis of trust between the Russian government and citizens. Now, the campaign for parliamentary elections in September could make fighting the pandemic even harder, since the ruling United Russia party may be even more reluctant to impose unpopular measures such as lockdowns.

Russian independent observers and journalists—including me and my colleagues at Meduza—already knew something was terribly off with Russia’s handling of the pandemic in late spring of 2020. We had looked at the numbers and recognized that COVID-19 deaths were being underreported in many regions of Russia. According to the official statistics at the time, tens of thousands of Russians were dying in 2020 of a mysterious pneumonia epidemic unrelated to COVID-19. This was hardly plausible. The more likely explanation: Russian regional authorities were writing off the majority of COVID-19 cases as “community-acquired pneumonia.”

There is no evidence of a cover-up ordered from the top. More likely, regional governorates were simply being discreet to avoid being the bearer of bad news to the Kremlin. Underreporting COVID-19 cases in the early stages of the pandemic plausibly made many Russians question the existence of the virus or lulled them into a false sense of security, although there is no poll data to back this up. What’s certain is that by November 2020, according to independent polling institute Levada, the majority of Russians did not trust their government’s COVID-19 figures: 33 percent thought them too low, while 28 percent believed they were exaggerated. ...

I am part of only a tiny minority of Russians who have chosen to be vaccinated—or managed to be, amid a chronic shortage of vaccine doses. Off to an early start with its own vaccine, Russia is now severely lagging behind. At the time of writing, about 12 per cent are fully vaccinated, while another 4.7 percent have received a single dose—a much lower vaccination rate than China and Brazil, let alone most of the developed world. And Russians are steadfast in their anti-vaccine convictions: According to a recent Morning Consult poll, Russia now has one of the highest levels of vaccine skepticism in the world, with 35 percent saying they are unwilling to get vaccinated. Even the United States, where vaccine skepticism is rampant, has only 19 percent committed anti-vaxxers. Recently the Kremlin admitted that its original goal to vaccinate 60 percent of the population by September will be unachievable, according to a report by TV Rain. Instead, the government has settled for a more realistic 30 percent.

In fact, the situation is so dire that some of Russia’s regions are already reintroducing lockdowns. In Moscow, city authorities have ordered compulsory vaccinations for certain categories of public servants and service industry workers and barred unvaccinated people from entering bars and restaurants. Not that Russians are easily cowed: There is now a booming black market for fake vaccination certificates. There are also reports of Russians paying bribes to have their vaccine dose discarded and be injected with saline solution instead.

None of this should come as a surprise. Instead of promoting safety measures and campaigning to get the public vaccinated, Russian state-owned media have spent an inordinate amount of time ridiculing other nations for their harsh lockdowns—which Russia never imposed—and trashing their vaccines. Not that Russians have much of a choice over which jab to get: Only the domestically produced Sputnik V, EpiVacCorona, and Covivac vaccines are permitted for use in Russia. One of these, EpiVacCorona, has been embroiled in a constant stream of scandal and skepticism about its efficacy and has been all but publicly accepted as a dud.

Television news programs and state news agencies, such as RIA Novosti, have gleefully amplified every complication and casualty from vaccines produced by BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca and gloated over every development hiccup. Unsurprisingly, vaccine skepticism is so rampant at these media outlets that the CEO of state news agency Rossiya Segodnya sent out a company-wide memo pleading the employees to get vaccinated and avoid the fate of three of their colleagues who died in intensive care in Moscow during a single week.

Meanwhile, Russian foreign broadcaster RT has been feeding Western audiences with anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, comparing lockdowns and other restrictions to the Nazi occupation and apartheid. That same twisted rhetoric is now spreading in Russia: On June 22, Egor Beroev, a prominent Russian TV and film actor, spoke at an awards ceremony and gave an impassioned defense of unvaccinated Russians, who he claimed were being “segregated” from the rest of the society like the Jews under the Nazis. To drive the point home, Beroev wore a yellow six-pointed star. His speech was met with applause. Similar stars adorned the T-shirts of protesters picketing the campaign headquarters of the ruling United Russia party in Moscow to protest against mandatory vaccinations. ...