Putin destroyed
Mother Russia--its once-vast merchant marine, its education system, its rich
bread-basket bottoms. He seized control of over 100 billionaires--by poisoning
those who resist--and is now the world's richest man.
Putin has weaponized wealth into launching an all-out attack on every Republic
on the planet. The USA barely flinched.
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Presidential Secretary Dmitry Peskov was recently asked what are Russia’s achievements in the last 20 years. He said, and I quote: “… … …”
Nothing. Nada.
You are probably all familiar with kremlebots’ playbook about how Putin pulled the country out of devastation wrought by “liberals” in the 1990s and brought prosperity to millions with his iron fist.
Let me present you with an alternative narrative that is gaining some very serious traction with Russian people. The list is much longer than can fit in this answer.
It took the Soviet Union only 16 years to send the first man into space after the end of World War II. In 20 years, Russia hasn’t learned to design its own computer, a machine tool, pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment and much more.
Local factories have been shut down, and giant Western groups like VW, Citroen, BMW, KIA., etc. have opened factories in their place with ownership, management and technology coming from overseas. The profits are split between the Western corporations, oligarchs and officials.
The national currency, the ruble, has jumped from 28.16 to 74.02 against USD with prices rising accordingly, while wages stagnated, as more money hasn’t been printed, possibly to avoid a runaway hyperinflation.
Pump price for gas rose by 483% (from 7.2 to 42). In case you didn't know, most of Russia’s revenues come from exporting crude oil.
The number of officials quintupled: from 485,566 to 2.4 million.
The population of Russia is roughly the same as 20 years ago, while millions of migrants have received citizenship in that period of time. At least 150,000 citizens, many of whom with excellent education and sellable skills, leave the country for good each year.
Russia spends more budget money on defence than on education and healthcare combined.
The number of hospitals fell by 50% (from 10,700 to 5,300). This actually points out to a logical conclusion that the population of Russia is much smaller than officially claimed.
The number of schools fell by 21% (from 68,100 to 41,349). This highlights the fact that most of the country has seen decline in population. People migrate to bigger cities and towns in search of work where they overwhelm the existing schools. The quality of education inevitably suffers.
At the same time, the number of Orthodox churches had doubled from 19,000 to 38,649, while the level of religiosity in the population hasn’t risen. Why are they building more churches, then? Because Russian Orthodox Church is a state corporation that exists for the sole objective of making its stakeholders and top management wealthy, which has been proven by photos and videos of high-flying lifestyle of thousands of priests.
According to just two polls: median salary is 15k/month or $200/month, and a third of the population don’t have enough money to buy footwear for all members of the family. When asked to comment, Putin claimed that 17k a month is a middle class salary.
At the same time, Russia is on the 3rd place in the world by the number of billionaires. The largest super-yachts and most expensive real estate in the world belong to Russian oligarchs.
Don’t listen to Kremlebots when they tell you Putin has built a country Russians want their children to live in. They don’t. They are just afraid to change things, because they are divided and there are three million law-enforcement officers, judges on the government payroll and hundreds of penal colonies from hell.
From <https://www.quora.com/>
