‘Cocktails and Masks Don’t Really Go Together’ - The New York Times

MOSCOW — When Nest, a cramped Moscow cocktail lounge, reopened for business in late June after more than two months of lockdown, it offered free masks and antiseptic lotion at the entrance to help calm any fears drinkers might have about sitting just inches from each other around tiny round tables.

“Everyone just wants to get back to a normal life,” he said.

Following a path taken by many people in Florida, Texas and other parts of the United States in early summer, Moscow and most of Russia in recent weeks have thrown caution to the wind.

Even restrictions that technically remain in force, like mandatory mask- and glove-wearing in the Moscow subway and on city buses, are mostly ignored.

The Moscow city government led the way in sounding the alarm over the pandemic in Russia and imposed draconian controls in late March, which were largely observed, at least at the start.

Traffic on the Moscow subway, which plunged by 85 percent at the peak of the crisis, has bounced back to near normal levels, with more than 5.4 million passengers riding trains on Tuesday, a post-lockdown record.

Unlike the Sun Belt in the United States, however, Russia has so far seen no surge in new cases, at least according to official statistics.

This is a big improvement on the more than 6,000 cases reported each day in the Russian capital at the peak of the outbreak in May — and a far cry from the more than 50,000 new cases reported each day this week in the United States — but the upward trend in Moscow, if it continues and accelerates, could quickly undo progress.

The Moscow city government on Friday warned of stiff fines for not wearing masks on public transport and in shops.

The mayor of Norilsk, an industrial city in the Arctic, resigned recently after accusing regional officials of underreporting coronavirus figures.

Polina Fedotova, a 27-year-old customer at the Nest cocktail bar, said she has many friends in the United States, so is well aware of what she called the “hellish” situation there.

Yuri Kravchenko, the manager of Pod Mukhoi, a popular basement bar in central Moscow, said “people are frightened deep down but the desire for a normal life is just too strong.”

Elizaveta Kolesnik, 21, said she had been in France when the pandemic arrived in Europe and been so frightened that she rushed back to Moscow just before Russia closed its borders

After more than two months cooped up at home in Moscow, however, she has put aside her earlier fear, deciding that “fate will decide what happens now” and “if you are afraid you only lose what life has to give.”