A “Good” Samaritan? The Geopolitics of Russia’s Covid-19 Assistance
Journal: The Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies
Year: 2023

Between March and December of 2020, more than three dozen states received various types of COVID-19 assistance from Moscow. The Russian government emphasized a humanitarian character of what has become the largest package of emergency aid since Russia’s independence. The Western governments and commentators cautioned that Moscow had strategic and nefarious motives in choosing the recipients of its coronavirus aid. This study theorizes humanitarian aid allocations by authoritarian states and test