Russia's pandemic/political update: war of words in parallel worlds

RUSSIA ECONOMICS - Report 01 Feb 2022 by Evgeny Gavrilenkov and Alexander Kudrin

As the Omicron strain entered Russia, the country’s daily COVID-19 incidence rate soared, having nearly attained 100K cases on January 28, and continued its upward journey quite fast in the days that followed, having reached nearly 126K as of February 1. This was not an unexpected increase as the same had happened earlier in many other countries. The Russian authorities yet again encouraged people to get vaccinated, follow safety protocols in public places, etc., but seemingly with little-to-no effect. Nonetheless, significantly tightening restrictions is not on the agenda. As the density of population is low on average and uneven across regions, Russia may not necessarily follow exactly the same pandemic pattern as other countries. Incidence rates will be high in big cities, while in smaller towns trends may be different.

In the geopolitical arena, it looks as though Russia and the West exist in two parallel realities now and there are no signs that these two parallel worlds can converge or even somehow intersect. Any meaningful messages going from one side to another either get lost in the vacuum between these realities or are seen in different colors. The West talks about the Russia-Ukraine crisis, while Russia talks about its strategic defense from NATO, while referring all Ukrainian issues to the Normandy format of negotiations on Ukraine. The West says that NATO is not a threat to Russia as it is a defensive alliance. However, Russia does not see NATO as a defensive organization, but rather an offensive one, referring to Saddam’s Iraq case, for instance, as Iraq couldn’t cause a threat to NATO. There is a long chain of mutual disagreements that cannot be reconciled as each side’s view of the other is based on its own experience and inherited dogmas. Currently it is difficult to imagine any other way out of the current deadlock apart from Russia’s greater alienation from the West for the time being – including on Russia’s own desire.

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