i normally would agree with this. However, there are 3 things arguing against this.
First, there is no particular value in lying. Unlike China, nobody is blaming Russia, and they would get nothing but sympathy if they had cases.
Second, they were not a place where a lot of chinese travel or work, nor do they have large numbers of people from spain or italy coming; their tourism is more summer, so they didn’t have an influx of international travelers.
Third, they are sending major help to Italy, when EU countries who are having CV cases did not. Including their military. i can’t imagine Russia risking their military in a foreign country if they were already experiencing a major outbreak in their own country.
Also, Russia would probably use military, and we track their military movements, and I would suspect we’d have public reports now of major movements to any area having a big breakout of CV cases.
They might, if they had a vaccine.
If they had a vaccine, and all that implies...