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Coronavirus pandemic

Russia’s response to COVID-19 pandemic was better than in US, Europe — Putin

"In terms of mobilizing the entire healthcare system and industry, [Russia] turned out to be way ahead of European countries and the United States," Putin said

© Pyotr Kovalyov/TASS

MOSCOW, February 14. /TASS/. Russia managed to mobilize its healthcare sector and industry to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic better than the United States and Europe did, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

During a meeting with editors-in-chief of Russian media outlets, fragments of which were aired on Sunday by the Rossiya-24 TV channel, the Russian leader said the United States and Europe "have a high level of healthcare and industry and demonstrate amazing achievements." "In some areas, we are way behind them, but all this is available only to a limited number of people. In our country, they [achievements in healthcare and industry] are [available] to the overwhelming majority of the population," Putin continued

"And they have no ability to mobilize; as it turned out we are better at it," the Russian president added. "In terms of mobilizing the entire healthcare system and industry, [Russia] turned out to be way ahead of European countries and the United States, who, in fact, found themselves in some sort of chaos."

In his words, some governments expected that Russia would find itself unable to cope with the pandemic.

"They assumed that we are worhtless, <…> and won’t be able to do anything," he said. "But we did - and we did it better than other countries.".

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