Page 28 - RusRPTJul21

2.11 Politics - misc
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN that the Biden administration was preparing additional sanctions on Russia as are required by the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (CBW) on June 19. The CBW act was triggered after it was confirmed that the weapons grade nerve agent Novichok was used to poison jailed anti-corruption activist and opposition politician Alexei Navalny last summer. The use of a chemical weapon automatically activates the CBW act that carries several automatic actions and sanctions spread over half a year. “NSC head Jake Sullivan confirmed over the weekend that further sanctions will be rolled out against Russia as per the Navalny incident. This seemed to be related to the 90 day deadline on the 1991 CBW Act, which actually lapsed earlier in June,” Tim Ash, Senior Sovereign Strategist at BlueBay Asset Management. The US imposed symbolic sanctions on Russia on March 3 in parallel to sanctions imposed by the EU that targeted seven officials directly connected with the arrest and jailing of Navalny in February.
The number of confirmed covid-19 infections has risen sharply in Russia in recent weeks. Case growth has been fastest in Moscow, but St. Petersburg has also seen a rise in infections. Between mid-March and early June, the officially reported daily covid case numbers remained below 10,000, but in recent days that number has jumped to over 15,000 a day. Relative to its population Russia’s current covid situation (about 110 cases daily per million inhabitants in the third week of June) is substantially harder than in most European countries (although e.g. the UK is back up to a rate of about 150 cases a day per million). Finland is currently seeing about 15 infections a day per million. Notably, the rise in covid cases in Russia is stretching hospital capacity.
2.12 Polls & Sociology
Most Russians are not afraid of contracting coronavirus, a new poll carried out by the independent Levada Centre suggests. According to the poll, 55% of respondents said they were not afraid of infection with the virus, down from 56% in February, while 42% of respondents said they were, down from 43% in February. The poll also said that 64% of those polled believed that they had never had the virus, while 11% told Levada that they had been vaccinated against Covid-19. Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on 26 May that almost 17mn Russians had been vaccinated with a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine. This represents about 11.8% of Russia's entire population, according to statistics reported by the World Bank.
28 RUSSIA Country Report July 2021 www.intellinews.com