Putin knows how to rule Russia as an autocrat. But he seems on the sidelines amid coronavirus crisis.
By Robyn Dixon
May 7, 2020
Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Moscow Center argued that regional bosses have forgotten how to make decisions in a Putin-controlled system, terrified of failure and dismissal. But Putin sees regional control measures like local quarantines as beneath “the presidential agenda.” “He is used to focusing on issues that, as he sees it, determine the country’s future in the global arena, its geopolitical position,” she wrote in a commentary.