Anatoly Golov’s blog post, 20.10.2021

Photo by mike_laptev/depositphotos.com

Recently, President Putin, speaking of the 13,000 fatalities on the roads of the country in 2020, compared this to losses “in military actions”. True. Russia is losing a lot of people in the war that our drivers are waging against Russian roads.

However, there is another war, and the losses there are much greater! According to Rosstat [the Russian Federal Statistical Service], more than 400,000 people have died from COVID in Russia since the beginning of the pandemic! According to the official data of the operational headquarters, significantly more than 13,000 people died in October alone,

But the President does not see this war! And he lost this war because he refused to fight this enemy, shifting all responsibility to the Governors! He suddenly remembered that Russia is a Federation, and invited the subjects of the Federation to wage this war themselves. But it was Putin and his governments that have “optimised” the healthcare sector in such a way for 20 years, that Russia is now ranked one of the first countries in the world as of the number of deaths from COVID!

Neither the budget of this year, nor the draft federal budget for the next year, nor the budgets of most constituent entities of the Russian Federation provide for a serious increase in funding of health care. The impression is that the authorities are satisfied with the current state of affairs, and they are not going to take any radical measures to reduce mortality.

Individual Governors introduce various restrictions, introduce mandatory vaccinations for many professions, introduce rapid testing, but all these represent scattered haphazard actions that cannot radically change the situation!

Putin has chosen the image of a winner for himself and is trying to be involved only in what promises him victory. He distanced himself from [the accident with] the Kursk [K-141 submarine in August 2000], [when 1,100 people, mainly schoolchildren were taken hostages in a] Beslan [school, North Ossetia, on 1 September 2004, and 314 hostages died] and other sad events. And now he has withdrawn from this battle.

And, thus, he lost it!

Anatoly Golov

is  Co-Chairman of the Social Democratic Faction of Yabloko, member of the Yabloko Federal Bureau and Co-Chair of the Russia’s Consumers Union