Pensions have also increased 3 or more times. In fact, they are now at the average Russian level, and, I believe, indexed to local prices, which were a bit higher than neighboring Krasnodar because of logistical issues (lack of a bridge). Anecdotal reports from people who have been there this summer suggest that prices are settling to the Krasnodar level, now that the bridge is open. I didn't make it there this summer, so I can't speak first hand.
Are you arguing russia is not corrupt? This claim would require an enormous amount of intellectual dishonesty.
Of course, Russia still has corruption, but it doesn't touch the average person nearly as much as westerners imagine it might.
Depends what you are comparing. I know that life in pre-war Donbas was better than on the Russian area right across the border from Donbas.
The regions right across from Dosbas are Rostov and Krasnodar...both thoroughly modern regions, so, this claim is hard to swallow. I myself have been living in Krasnodar region for over a year, and it is quite easy to live to a western standard if you have a reasonable profession.
Not trolling here. I'm genuinely curious.
What would be a reasonable profession in Krasnodor?
I had never even heard of the place until this thread.
Woah there:
Ukraine’s ‘worse’ situation does not exonerate Russia from what the Gulag victim above acknowledges: that Russia operates from a place of denial and whitewashing of their past. And this is largely because our historically illiterate and forgetful world enables them to do so.
By contrast, with post-war Germany, the international community held Nuremberg. Yet Soviet Russia is responsible for even more horrors.
If you, billakay, and your countrymen spent less time engaging in mental gymnastics justifiying your State’a aggressions against Ukraine and others, and more time acknowledging and protesting its crimes even against its own people, Russia would truly blossom.
Even here in the U.S. people have the wherewithal to be critical of our policies at home, of our leaders, and misadventures abroad past and present. That capacity for collective self-criticism is part of what keeps our fragile system running. And that’s what the Russians expats here observe as well.