Vlad is in his final years. He has lost touch with how his
actions are affecting his citizens.
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He’s 70, not 90. These are not his *final years*. Perhaps the last 20 or so. He speaks publicly all the time, traveling around his country and to foreign venues. I’ve watched and listened. He is agile, alert and focused.
Go watch the myriad Russian vloggers on YT. The videos show what seems comparable to the lives to Westerners. I do not see privation in even the towns of 15k or so. I see lots of vehicles, many of them Asian. I see all sorts of homes, just like in any American village or small town. I see multiple shops/grocery stores, gas stations that look just like the ones in settlements of 1k or less all around me in my rural Midwestern home. I can show you American villages that are supposedly full of privation, but they aren’t, really. People are living their chosen lives, here and there.
In the Russian cities, there are housing suburbs full of young people who own their apartments that cost around $30-$50k. The monthly maintenance costs/utilities are less for more of a higher quality than anything I’ve seen in America. I’ve read the descriptions by FReepers who lived/worked in Russia and they confirm what I see with my own eyes.
You want a hard life? Take a look at the owner-operator truckers being hit with regs and scarce diesel at high prices. Talk to American doctors who live in fear of cancellation for speaking honestly to their patients. Talk to retirees of modest means who have done everything right while inflation and corrupt governments erode their life’s work/savings while making sure their kids have been taught to hold the parents’ values in contempt.
Right now, this moment, I would venture the average Russian citizen is freer and more secure than their counterpart in the USA. I see the Russian government come in and repair bomb targets while American cities have been reduced to boarded up rubble piles with addicts/homeless living in true squalor. I read of Russia evacuating civilians from the border areas, while our government increases the vectors for attacks on Americans who are trying to survive in our border areas.
The *leader* in their last years who is out of touch is Joe Biden. Castreaux is in the running for the out-of-touch part, even though he’s barely middle-aged. Nanzi is at the end, cognitively impaired, and out of touch. I could go on and you know who the subjects would be.
I think your compassion is misdirected and your observations are skewed.
I don’t.