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Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, Russia's Putin Missing in Action, Critics Say

Jamie Dettmer

   In 1941, when German forces blitzed their way into the Soviet Union and
   destroyed the Russian air force in the western borderlands within 48
   hours, then-Soviet dictator Josef Stalin retreated to his dacha and saw
   no one for several days.
   The memory of Stalin's weeklong seclusion is now being invoked in the
   Russian capital by Muscovite critics of President Vladimir Putin, who
   say he has been largely absent as Moscow battles to curb the spread of
   the coronavirus, and St. Petersburg readies for a surge in cases.
   Russian authorities confirmed 3,388 new coronavirus cases Wednesday,
   bringing the country's official number to 24,490, marking the latest
   one-day record in new cases.
   "The COVID-19 crisis is highlighting one of Putin's less-inspiring
   traits -- his willingness to let certain serious challenges become
   someone else's problem," said Mark Galeotti, an analyst at Britain's
   Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), and a columnist for The Moscow
   Times.
   In mid-March, Putin donned a hazmat suit and respirator during a visit
   to a Moscow hospital. The visit came as Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin
   warned that the outbreak in the capital was much worse than official
   figures, suggesting the Kremlin failed to grasp how widely and quickly
   the coronavirus was spreading.
   Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov downplayed the threat, saying there
   was "de facto no epidemic in Russia," suggesting that Russia might
   "avoid one."
   "One of the main topics today is why Putin is almost imperceptible in
   the coronavirus situation," Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Moscow
   Center posted in a commentary.
   "He only addressed the nation briefly twice and went to the
   (coronavirus) hospital in Kommunarka. But he neither gave his own
   assessments of the crisis nor proposed a plan of action but limited
   himself to scattered measures and general words. No drama, empathy or
   attempts to mobilize," she said.

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