Last, but not least, the country is starting to get wind of the pandemic too (approx. Second, there is a domestic economic crisis, which has already been looming large for the last years but has now been exacerbated by the plummeting oil prices after Russia withdrew from the OPEC+ deal with the Gulf states (as a result, the Ruble lost nearly a third of its value before the coronavirus has become a global pandemic), which will be only catalysed by the possible global recession. First, there is an issue of power transfer that entered its first phase in January this year when the president announced the Constitutional reform (for more see “Lost in Transition”). Currently we can discern at least three crises that the Kremlin is dealing with. The fact that Russia would send assistance abroad when it itself is facing huge challenges at home was far from certain. The novel SARS-CoV-2 virus, as the opinion piece of the leading thinkers in the Foreign Policy journal indicates, is likely to usher in “permanent shifts in political and economic global power in ways that will become apparent only later”. It is too early to draw conclusion on the long-term effects this action might have for Russia’s global reputation when it is all over. The Italian newspaper „La Stampa“ reported last week, that 80 percent of the medical equipment brought by the Russian specialists (mostly nuclear and biological officers of the medical branch of MoD) were hardly suited for fighting the pandemic. The last time Russian soldiers stepped on the Apennine soil was more than 200 years ago, in 1799, during the second Coalition War against Napoleon.
The images of Russian military medical personnel rolling down the streets of Italian Bergamo, sent to help the local government to fight the Corona epidemic left a mixed impression on the international community. Russia’s strategy in times of SARS-CoV-2 is most likely going to be threefold: further working on its global image by sending aid and offering assistance shifting its focus from the near abroad to great power politics and doubling up the ongoing information warfare if the first two do not bring immediate results. But, if coupled with other pre-existing problems (power transfer and economic hardships), the pandemic could exacerbate an already unstable situation and lead to new unpredictable foreign policy moves. For Russia the novel SARS-CoV-2 still seems to be the best of a bad lot, as the country still reports relatively low numbers of infected people.
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