MOSCOW – After months of questions about the true scale of the coronavirus pandemic in Russia and the effectiveness of a vaccine developed in Russia, the state statistical agency in Moscow announced new figures indicating that the number of Covid-19 deaths is more than three times as loud as officially reported.
Since the start of the pandemic earlier this year, the health crisis has been involved and, critics say, distorted by political calculations, as President Vladimir V. Putin and the Kremlin-controlled media have repeatedly boasted of Russian successes in the fighting the virus and maintaining a relatively low fatality rate.
Russia recorded more than 3 million cases of infection, making it the fourth most affected country in the world, but only 55,827 deaths, less than in seven other countries. A demographer from a government agency who questioned the official fatality figures, deeming them too low, was fired over the summer.
New data released on Monday by Rosstat, the state statistics agency, however, indicated that the demographer was right and the actual number of fatalities is much higher than previously reported. The agency reported that the number of deaths between January and November was 229,732 higher than in the same period last year, an increase that a senior official attributed largely to the coronavirus.
Tatyana Golikova, a deputy prime minister who leads Russia’s efforts to combat the pandemic, said at a government meeting on Monday that more than 81 percent of the 2020 death toll was “due to Covid” , which would mean that the virus has killed more than 186,000 Russians so far this year.
This is still much less than the more than 334,000 deaths caused by Covid-19 in the United States, but it does mean that Russia suffered more fatalities as a result of the pandemic than European countries like Italy, France and Great Britain, whose poor record has regularly cited by Russian state media as evidence of Russia’s relative triumph. As of Tuesday afternoon, the web page with Rosstat’s new data was inaccessible.
The difference between the official and the actual mortality rate is largely explained by Russia’s practice of registering a coronavirus-related death only in cases where the autopsy confirmed the coronavirus as the main cause. Critics say it allowed authorities to massage the numbers.
Rather than comforting the population, however, the juggling of statistics only fueled the deep distrust that many Russians have in their government, even among those who vote for Putin, and his reassuring statements.
In August, Russia became the first country to register a coronavirus vaccine, which was hailed by Putin as proof of his country’s superior science, and started a nationwide inoculation campaign in early December. But a recent poll found that only 38 percent of Russians intend to be vaccinated, despite assurances that it works from Putin, who won nearly 77 percent of the vote in a presidential election last year.
Russia has a long history of scientific achievements worldwide. But the credibility of his vaccine, named after the world’s first satellite, the Soviet-era Sputnik, was undermined by the fact that Putin announced it was ready for use before normal clinical trials were completed.
The suspicion of what the authorities say is so widespread that there was little shock or even surprise earlier this month when an investigative news outlet, Proekt, reported that Putin, unlike state television reports, did not spend much of the year working at the government residence near Moscow, but spent some time relaxing at his vacation home on the warmer shores of the Black Sea.
Images of Putin videoconferencing with officials in a sparsely furnished office have been a staple of news bulletins on state television, sending a message that the president was keeping himself safe but still working hard near Moscow.
Proekt reported that Putin actually divided his time between his residence near Moscow and a villa in Sochi, a tourist town on the Black Sea, building two identically identified offices for video calls to disguise his whereabouts. The Kremlin denied the report.