Zoom with the Pechenegs

The third message of the President about Koronavirus

Putin’s third appeal to citizens in connection with coronavirus was made in truly popular format: as a video conference with governors and ministers. Firstly, citizens love when they give instructions to the chiefs. Secondly, the country is sitting on the remote, all offices are chatting with each other daily at Zoom, and this time the president found a native format for self-isolated format, acting as an organizer of a video conference.

It can be assumed that the sociological services of the AP analyzed the reaction of citizens to the first two appeals and recognized them unsuccessful. Especially the second one from which people were waiting for help, and received only warm words to the doctors and the action to provide special powers to the governors - do not wait for the team from the center, but act according to the situation.

In the third handling, all this tried to fix it. Governors were shown as diligent students writing down the words of the head of state in a notebook:

The visual signal that the president is by no means self -confused and controls the situation.

In addition to warm words, doctors working with coronavirus got large allowances, up to 80 thousand rubles, within three months, a whole condition for most Russian regions.

Most of the president’s speech was a list of specific measures to help business and citizens by the state. Everyone is talking about the need for such measures now. Transport and main enterprises should continue to work in compliance with the necessary epidemiological restrictions, Putin said. All enterprises of small and medium -sized businesses will receive a delay in social contributions for six months, the government is instructed to prepare an expanded plan to support companies: first of all, those that can save jobs.

Those citizens who will lose the source of income, the president once again promised support: unemployment payments in the maximum amount (at the minimum wage), also speedy status design. Credit holidays should be expanded to a larger number of individuals compared to the framework that have already been established earlier (for example, on mortgage loans with a loan amount of up to 1.5 million rubles with an average mortgage in the country of 2.5 million rubles). Families with minor children will apply additional monthly payments.

Measures leave a dual impression. On the one hand, the state finally admitted that in the current conditions there are extraordinary obligations and must be fulfilled. On the other hand, they are still insufficient in comparison with European or American large -scale plans to save national economies. They do not insure a noticeable part of the business from ruin:

The measures that entrepreneurs really hoped for are starting with the abolition of VAT.

According to economists, millions of people in Russia may lose their jobs, which is aggravated by the instability of the ruble and oil prices and the extremely vague prospects for the restoration of demand for Russian raw materials.

At the same time, Putin admitted that during the development of the epidemic, new steps to support the economy may be required. He stated that it would be necessary to act according to circumstances, the governors called not to abuse confidence (we pretend that no one was guessing who was talking about)

And he mentioned that the country has enough accumulated reserves to cope with any scenario of the crisis.

Previously, some sources reported that Putin opens against the large -scale use of reserve funds.

The most unexpected, perhaps, was the last part of the president’s speech: he compared the current difficulties with the raids of the steppe nomads of the Pechenegs and Polovtsy, who tormented ancient Rus' in the Middle Ages. The phrase recognized a quote from the performance of the legendary lawyer Fedor Povleko, who defended the old woman in the case of the theft of a tin kettle.

Polesyo rose:

“The Pechenegs tormented her, Polovtsy, Tatars, Poles. Twelve languages ​​fell upon her, took Moscow. Everything endured, Russia overcame everything, only stronger and grew from testing. But now, now ... The old woman stole a kettle at a price of fifty cents. Of course, Russia will not stand this, from this it will die irrevocably ... "

However, it is unlikely that the president wanted to compare the coronavirus with the teapot. So, in the current conditions, the meaning of this metaphor may be that neither with the Polovtsy, nor with the Pecheneg, nor with quarantine on the scale of most of the planet none of the living Russians, including the president himself, had previously encountered.

Can a state with its current quality of the state apparatus deploy a truly effective system for supporting citizens, and not just its own proxies and state corporations? Unfortunately, soon we will be able to test this issue on our own skins.