Russians fainting in the subway. People jumping into city pools and the Moscow River, some drowning. Ambulances racing around a city eerily free of congestion. Morgues running out of space and corpses piling up. Muscovites getting stuck at airports that are scrambling to handle some 64,000 flights canceled or delayed because of poor visibility. Staff at foreign embassies fleeing. A voice on the radio warning: “Surgical masks do not help. The monoxide gas and the burning substances will stay in your lungs forever!”
Between hundreds of wildfires in Russia and record-breaking heat, this has been the worst summer in Russian memory. The death rate in Moscow has doubled from its customary levels, to 700 per day, owing to heat-induced illness and smoke-filled air. Thousands of homes and dachas have been destroyed, with direct losses estimated at $15 billion.
The fires started a month ago, but Russia’s leaders were slow to grasp the gravity of the situation and slower to respond. As his country burned, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev went on vacation in the resort town of Sochi.
Despite the dire situation in the capital, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov departed for his own holiday, in the Alps, returning only grudgingly. The state forestry agency’s Moscow director was fired for refusing to cut short his own vacation, while Medvedev, in a striking display of hypocrisy, threatened to dismiss other forestry officials who remained on leave.
This response has been so appalling in its ineptitude that it should expose and discredit the Russian government at its most incompetent and should permanently taint those in charge. Of course, this doesn’t mean it will: Russia’s government is not a government of the people, but of the well-connected.
But if the events of the past month haven’t started a political conflagration, they do seem to be fanning a long-smoldering public distrust of the government. And fires can be unpredictable.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin bears direct responsibility for the dysfunctional system that set the stage for disaster: Legislation that came into effect in 2007, when he was president, turned forest management over to poorly equipped local authorities and to companies that manufacture paper and related products. Oligarchs close to the Kremlin allegedly lobbied for the law, which decimated the forest ranger corps and left Russia ill-prepared for today’s calamity.
But Putin’s political survival skills are formidable, and writing his political obituary would be premature. More than anyone in the top leadership, he has been meeting with affected families and directing emergency operations. In a blatant PR stunt Tuesday, he even co-piloted a firefighting plane in the Ryazan region, site of some of the worst fires.
And while elections are coming up, voters are unlikely to have much choice when they go to the polls, given the absence of viable political alternatives. Russia doesn’t have a remotely functioning democracy; it lacks official accountability, independent institutions and a vigorous media. Opposition leaders and other critics of the government are endlessly harassed by the authorities.
Under such circumstances, it is no wonder that firefighters in some regions, ordered to protect the local bosses’ dachas, watched helplessly as the homes of ordinary people were reduced to ashes. And it is no wonder that, despite the raging fires, officials have in recent weeks managed to find the personnel and resources to crack down on ongoing protests against cutting down part of the Khimki forest on the outskirts of Moscow, innocuous opposition rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and a protest against the AWOL mayor of Moscow.
The poor response to the fires will further widen the chasm separating the nation’s authorities from society. Even before Russia began burning, Levada Center polls reported that 59 percent of Russians want a return to direct elections for governors, 56 percent are “unsatisfied with what is happening in the country” and 43 percent do not expect “anything positive” from Putin.
Lilia Shevtsova is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow Center, and David J. Kramer is a fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington.
