When visiting Russia a some years ago I was shocked by the genuinely lower quality and lack of variety in Russian food markets compared to EU Europe. They do import the rotting vegetables/fruit that other people don’t want. The lack of variety of things like sausage in Russia is presumably due to corruption and resultant stagnation of the Russian economy.
Russians are now and always have been just serfs. They don’t know any better.
Putin is the current Czar and the Oligarchs are the curr3nt nobility.