It is common knowledge that Russia is the major source of anti-Western disinformation. Less understood is that Russian citizens are the primary victims of the regime’s deceptions.
The official cover-up of the number of COVID-19-related deaths in Russia demonstrates how government officials consistently lie to the public. They cannot be held accountable because the political system itself is founded on mass fraud, undergirded by myths about Russia’s achievements.
Cover-ups of internal disasters are a long tradition in Russian history — one designed to disguise state failure. This concealment demonstrates the disdain that Russia’s rulers have for the public, viewed as an ignorant and malleable mass. The deception dynamic also reflects a deep-rooted fear of social revolt and yet another collapse of the imperial state. Kremlin officials have consistently hidden the truth about Russia’s realities — from 18th century “Potemkin villages” designed to present a façade of success to Stalin’s labor camps and genocidal famines that hid the realities of Soviet communism from Western view.
The list of lies and cover-ups continues to grow under President Vladimir Putin, from the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster in August 2000, the extensive doping of Russian athletes in several Olympic Games, and explosions during nuclear weapons tests in August 2019 that spiked radiation levels in northern Russia, to the deliberate underreporting of extensive wildfires in Siberia this summer.
The most extensive current cover-up revolves around the number of pandemic-related deaths. While officials reported just over 220,000 deaths by mid-October, independent demographers calculate that the figure is closer to 750,000. By proportion of the population, Russia has registered the highest pandemic death toll of any major country. Even more ominously, the crisis will escalate in a collapsing healthcare system. Russia has one of the lowest vaccination rates, its Sputnik vaccine is under scrutiny, and broad sectors of the public do not trust the government. They do not trust the government, that is to say, whether officials are talking about the dangers of COVID or the advisability of vaccination.
Russia faces an existential paradox that will become starker as the end of Putin’s presidential term in 2024 approaches. Centralization and repression without sustained economic benefits will increase public opposition and turmoil, while liberalization and decentralization can also result in the unraveling of the state structure. Without political pluralism, economic reform, and regional autonomy, the federal structure will become increasingly unmanageable. However, although a genuine federal democracy may rescue the state, some of its regions can also use the opportunity to secede. Persistent fears of state disintegration among officials through repetition of Gorbachev’s perestroika in the 1980s have precluded the economic and political reforms necessary to prevent systemic collapse. Power holders are not prepared to pursue reforms that could unseat them and dispossess their stolen assets.
Russia’s new national security strategy, released in July 2021, highlights the mounting vulnerabilities felt by the Kremlin. The document is more inward-looking than previous versions and focuses on domestic instabilities. It pinpoints the crisis in economic development, fueled by low competitiveness and technological backwardness, rising social inequalities, growing poverty, and a steady decline in the working-age population as major problems. However, to disguise its own failures, the state focuses on Western scapegoats. The strategy suggests that Western countries manipulate Russia’s socioeconomic problems to weaken its internal unity and challenge its territorial integrity. Such assertions indicate that the Kremlin will intensify its internal repression and external aggression to root out alleged enemies and distract public attention from domestic failures.
Putin’s government thrives in the world of conspiracies and mass disinformation designed to achieve strategic goals. Its deceptions extend to foreign policy, with Moscow seeking to fool citizens that Russia is a rising power, feared by rivals, admired by allies, and destined to prevail over the United States. Nonetheless, such a narrative cannot be sustained given the country’s bleak prospects, including a shrinking population, an unreformed economy based on volatile energy revenues, and impending power struggles among corrupt officials as the Putin era expires.
Janusz Bugajski is a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, D.C. His recent book, Eurasian Disunion: Russia’s Vulnerable Flanks, is co-authored with Margarita Assenova. His upcoming book is titled Failed State: Planning for Russia’s Rupture.
