Kremlin Politics Are Bad for Russia’s Health

Most hazardous of all to Russia’s pandemic response, though, has been the Kremlin’s toxic nationalist propaganda. Officials bet they could separate broadsides aimed at the West and the constant denigration of Western vaccines at home from domestic cheerleading. Instead, this approach just amplified existing hesitancy, something the Kremlin has also done little to reverse. Putin took his vaccination behind closed doors. And he absurdly claimed last month that foreigners were coming from Europe to get the Sputnik jab “because it is more reliable” and then buying false vaccine certificates. Official death figures, meanwhile, have lingered around improbably similar numbers — for example before the September legislative election. All of this leaves Russia caught in a catch-22 of its own making: Unable to bring in Western vaccines, unable to impose mandates at a national level, unwilling to provide the data required for its vaccine to be approved in the European Union, unable to rebuild popular trust.Not unlike China, Russia must hope that the pandemic ebbs before more challenging political decisions are required.