Many of Russia’s official reactions are similar to those in the United States.

The Nation
April 9, 2020
By Stephen F. Cohen

Russia is on the front line of the coronavirus crisis in that it shares a very long territorial border with China/Asia. Nonetheless, many of its official reactions are similar to those in the United States.

Citizens are being told to self-isolate. New responsibilities, authority, and public prominence are being devolved to regional governors and mayors of large cities, particularly Sergei Sobyanian, the already accomplished and widely admired mayor of Moscow.  And leaders at all levels are suddenly relying heavily on, and deferring to, the expert opinion of medical authorities and other specialists.

But at this moment in Russian history, something else is being tested: not only Vladimir Putin’s personal leadership but the efficacy of the political-administrative system he has created since 2000—the “vertical” stretching from the Kremlin to all of the regions and cities of the world’s largest territorial country. Though Putin and his evolving system have faced previous crises—in particular, the Chechen War—this is the most serious and ramifying.

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Dear CCI Readers,

A number of you have asked how Russia is faring during this pandemic, what are their COVID-19 numbers and what is the Russian government doing about it.  We have the following just in from Andrew Korybko, an American Moscow-based political analyst.

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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Dear CCI Readers,

For years I intellectually dismissed the issue of Sanctions.

To me they were economic and somehow weren’t really all that important. You may have had the same experience. Looking back, it seems that Sanctions may have been somehow sanitized for U.S. readership.

Along the way Sanctions became an issue for me when I realized that up to 500,000 Iraqi children died due to our U.S. Sanctions. No longer could I remain indifferent.

Those Iraqi mothers and children were, in my mind, equivalent to me and my four children.

How would I have felt knowing that lifesaving milk, food and medicine were being kept from my four dying children by a wealthy nation across the ocean? It is unbelievable and really totally inexcusable to try to imagine!

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Dear CCI Readers,

It will be interesting to see how President Putin’s exposure to COVID-19 turns out. If he is positive, he should do well by current metrics even though he is over 60 years. He eats healthily, exercises and swims daily, maintains low weight and uses alcohol only for toasts. The most at risk patients are older persons who are smokers, alcohol users, those with heart and kidney disease and obese persons.

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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Simone Weil Center
By Paul Grenier
April 1, 2020

Sharon Tennison, director of the Center for Citizen Initiatives, has called for an end to the U.S. policy of sanctions against dozens of nations during a deadly global pandemic. We urge everyone to read her appeal, sign on to it, and distribute it further. *

CCI’s statement notes the foolishness of a policy which “affects the ability of [other] countries to contain the [COVID-19] outbreak, leading in turn to more infections” and the likelihood that the virus will then spread beyond  those nations’ borders, restarting the global outbreak

CCI’s appeal draws attention to the obvious inhumanity of the United States’ actions against Iran in particular, a country whose economy was already in shambles thanks to the so-called ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions regime imposed by the Trump administration in 2017 after Washington unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal.  The resulting economic crunch and blow to the country’s medical system had already, before the pandemic, precipitated a humanitarian crisis in Iran.   It is worth adding that, according to a recent prognosis from researchers at the Sharif University of Technology in Iran, the coronavirus death toll in Iran could ultimately end up numbering in the millions.[1]

Although even U.S. allies such as the UK have now called on the United States to remove its sanctions against Iran, the Trump administration has, to the contrary, tightened them further. At a recent press conference on the subject, President Trump can be heard repeating, “They know what to do” even as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserts that food and medications are exempt from the sanctions.

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