Russians Were Urged to Return to Normal Life. Except for Putin.
The Russian leader claims to be conquering the pandemic, but he inhabits a virus-free bubble, rarely leaving home. The few people he meets must quarantine first.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/world/europe/putin-virus-russia-bubble.html#click=https://t.co/8PT44uz6Aq
The Federal Protective Service, Russia’s answer to the Secret Service, has helped build a virus-free bubble around President Vladimir V. Putin that far outstrips the protective measures taken by many of his foreign counterparts.
Russian journalists who cover Mr. Putin have not seen him up close since March. The few people who meet him face-to-face generally spend as much as two weeks in quarantine first. The president still conducts his meetings with senior officials — including with his cabinet and his Security Council — by video link from a spartan room in his residence outside Moscow, which has been outfitted with Ms. Izranova’s disinfectant tunnel.
But while President Trump and President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil have chafed against restricting their own movements, Mr. Putin has retreated into an intricate cocoon of social distancing — even as he has allowed life in Russia to essentially return to normal.
The contrast between the behavior of Mr. Putin and that of his people now looms large, as a second wave of the pandemic threatens to wash over Russia. In Moscow, where people packed indoor bars and restaurants all summer with few masks in sight, the number of daily reported new cases tripled to more than 2,300 in the last two weeks.
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