My feeling is that Russia is very likely correct in indicating their numbers of infected is low. When they want to clamp down on people acting in ways that spread the infection, the clamp down is pretty effective.

As has been the case in China, once they'd got a grip on things - the figures for new cases appears to be way way down now.
...........

The initial evident decision of the UK government seems to have been to go for minimal efforts to stop it spreading, in the hope that if everyone got it, and the survivors would have "herd immunity".

Problem being, if 50 million got it, and there's a one in a hundred chance of dying - which is a lot lower than some estimates - that would have meant half a million dead. So, faced with the situation that everone else was doing everything to stop transmission, they fortunately seem to have made a U- turn. Trying to disguise things by talking about introducing things tgat would reduced transmission "only at the right time", as if somehow slowly infection rates reduced the danger of a peak of infections.

It's frightening to look at Boris Johnson waffling on and looking life a terrified rabbit in his daily press conferences. Almost as bad as looking at Trump babbling away.