PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo) The COVID-19 pandemic hit Russia at a precarious moment marked by a global oil war and constitutional reforms intended to secure regime stability beyond 2024. These three crises place significant pressure on the Putin system defined by its focus on statism, international standing, and a power vertical that concentrates power within the national government. As in other federal systems, the Kremlin has responded to the challenge by outlining a decentralized response, resulting in a scramble in the central and regional governments to limit costs and evade blame. In this memo, we demonstrate the variation in regional threats and regions’ capacity to meet these threats, then assess the potential effects of de facto decentralization. This analysis demonstrates a mismatch between the nature of the threat and the regional resources available to meet the crisis and points to the likelihood that regional policy will vary in response to the trade-off between public health and economic costs.
