One video shows bodies in plastic bags stacked in the basement of a hospital in the Siberian city of Barnaul after a morgue overflowed. “Well, this is how it is,” said a voice on the video , one of dozens posted anonymously by desperate hospital workers amid a surge of Covid-19 cases in provincial Russian cities. “We’re overloaded.” During the spring, the pandemic struck Moscow particularly hard while mostly sparing provincial locations. But now infections are rising in several of Russia’s far-flung regions, and hospitals and morgues are overwhelmed. In his long tenure, President Vladimir V. Putin has centralized political power. But during the pandemic, he has delegated to regional authorities decisions on locking down businesses, shutting schools and taking other public health precautions. The stated purpose was to allow local officials to tailor their responses to local circumstances, though political analysts also […]