But the propaganda victory was bittersweet as the spread of the coronavirus gathered pace in Russia, perhaps explaining why the plane’s landing in New York received only cursory treatment on Thursday’s main Russian state television news broadcasts. While the pandemic does not yet appear to have reached the scale seen in Western Europe and the United States, in Russia, opposition politicians and medical workers have warned of a potential shortage of equipment in the coming weeks.

In the Perm region in the Ural Mountains, the authorities on Wednesday urged residents to start sewing their own masks.

“Doctors and nurses in the whole country are sitting without masks and getting each other sick,” the opposition activist Aleksei A. Navalny posted on Twitter. “This is monstrous. Putin is crazy.”

Mr. Putin did not mention the aid delivery in an address to the nation about coronavirus on Thursday. Instead, he warned that some regions, including Moscow, had not yet brought the pandemic under control.

“Virology specialists believe that the epidemic is not yet past its peak globally, and the same goes for our country,” a stern Mr. Putin said Thursday, addressing Russians from his country home outside Moscow, where he has been working remotely in recent days.

Mr. Putin said a nationwide paid holiday to fight the pandemic would be extended until the end of the month, but he left it to regional authorities to decree their own social distancing measures. Russia’s two biggest and hardest hit cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, went into lockdown this week with residents forbidden to leave their homes except to buy food and medicine, and to walk their dogs within a hundred yards of their residence.