Russian president Vladimir Putin (center) on March 17, pretending to lead the containment of COVID-19 in Russia. It's all a sham. Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin is on the left and Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin is on the right.

During a high-level Russian government meeting on Tuesday, Russian president Vladimir Putin sought to reassure Russians about the spread of COVID-19 in their country. Aleksandr Litoi wrote in RFE/RL yesterday:

“We were able to contain the mass penetration and spread” of coronavirus, Putin said. “The situation is generally under control despite high risk levels.”

Until recently daily life in Russia continued mostly normally, and officials have reported only 199 cases and one death out of over 100,000 tests. Russia’s IT resources have been devoted not to fighting COVID-19 directly, but to AI that monitors social media for “fake news” about COVID-19, as well as video surveillance for shortages on supermarket shelves, according to an AFP report Tuesday. Russia also uses Moscow’s face-recognition network to fine people violating quarantines.

Unfortunately, Russia’s seeming success story appears to have been a sham. Many COVID-19 cases in Russia were likely labeled as pneumonia and the Doctor’s Alliance, a newly-formed medical union, estimates that thousands of Russians are infected. Anonymous reports say that doctors have been told to clear hospital wards to make room for “pneumonia” cases, and local hospitals in St. Petersburg have run out of space. Russia has also begun work on two large hospitals in Moscow to house COVID-19 victims, according to Will Stewart and Jemma Carr in the Daily Mail. And yesterday, Russia ordered its schools and universities to transition to online learning. So Russia appears to be bumbling toward addressing the problem, although too late.

Part of the problem is that Russia does not use the WHO test for the COVID-19 virus; instead, it uses its own test which may be less accurate. Also, testing is a monopoly run by a lab in Novosibirsk in Siberia, and shipping COVID-19 tests off to Siberia delays test results. Furthermore, according to Reid Standish writing Wednesday in Foreign Policy:

“The government knows that people don’t have much savings and that businesses run on monthly cash flow,” said [Alexander] Gabuev from the Carnegie Moscow Center. “The concern is how to do a proper quarantine and not cause a massive economic disruption in the process.”

In short, it appears that the US federal government has been following Putin’s lead for the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there is some variation (Russia has had more test kits, for example), the delay and incompetence and fake PR from the top are strikingly similar, as is the last-minute and bumbling realization that the matter is serious. I wonder where President Trump has been getting his coronavirus plans from?