At the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, Russia was considered less affected than other countries in fight against the pandemic. Despite sharing a long border with China, the number of COVID-19 cases remained low in January and February 2020.[1] The pandemic strongly hit Russia mid-March, with Moscow accounting for a large share of COVID-19 cases.[2] On May 22nd, 2020, the official numbers were of 326,448 COVID-19 cases in Russia.[3]
Without doubt, the pandemic has repercussions on Russia, not only on a its domestic politics, altering the image of President Putin and weakening the Russian economy, but also has significant impacts on Russian foreign policy.
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[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-response-covid-19
[2] Ibid.
