Vladimir Putin is pushing Russia into past: Maybe a generation, maybe a century

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2022/03/12/vladimir-putin-is-pushing-russia-into-the-past

64 152 4 years ago

raxxorrax• 4 years ago

To when Kiew was the capital of Russia?

that would be the absolute 5d chess: capture Kiev, move the capital there and change the name of the country to Kievan Rus

m0llusk• 4 years ago

Just as sanctions hit with historic speed and scope it is possible that damages could be reversed as quickly. This could become an opportunity to make long needed capital improvements. Either way it needs to be acknowledged that the past is a poor guide to this current situation.

Robotbeat3• 4 years ago

Destruction versus creation are asymmetric. It is faster to destroy than to build.

jethro_tell• 4 years ago

Our continued ripple effects in the supply chain are a pretty good reminder.

You get minor bottle necks and the working system breaks.

To start or rebuild the system you start will all the bottle necks and have to add the pieces one at a time until you have something working.

flavius296637• 4 years ago

I hope not. Russia has been doing this kind of stuff for the past 300 years, in Eastern Europe. It's just now that the West started to care. They were always imperialistic, and never cared for human lives.

dreen2• 4 years ago

Yeah, thats the imperialist mentality. The west didnt care as much until recently due to being imperialists themselves, but this is no longer the guiding policy (though still a sentiment present in politics and societies).

pengaru• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

paulcarroty• 4 years ago

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/03/09/mariupol-materni...

After watching this bombarded hospital I wish them to burn in hell. They deserve much stronger sanctions than North Korea.

tablespoon7• 4 years ago

After watching this bombarded hospital I wish them to burn in hell. They deserve much stronger sanctions than North Korea.

It should be noted that sanctions have done nothing to change the behavior of North Korea's leadership to be more palatable to the West. I bet it'll be the same with Russia.

blackhaz• 4 years ago

I don't think anyone in public has enough information to state this. We don't know what NK we'd have to deal with had those sanctions not been in place.

theturtletalks• 4 years ago

Sanctions affect dictatorships and oligarchies differently.

avgDev3• 4 years ago

NK is not Russia. Russia knows what western brands and luxuries are. There have been lines in Russia to McDonalds, Victoria's Secret and other stores.

The sanctions are working. Russians are going back in time and soon will be standing in line for bread.

Chelsea a large premier league team owned by an oligarch has been frozen and he can't sell like he wanted to.

Nikkita Mazepin has been removed from F1 and sanctioned along with his oligarch father and no longer can travel in EU.

Aeroflot(russian airline) grounded its planes because they will get seized and cannot enter EU/US air space.

Other oligarchs are moving their expensive yachts because those are getting seized. Their other assets such as properties and bank accounts are being frozen all over the world and they a lot real estate in the UK. This definitely hurts.

The list goes on and on.

umanwizard3• 4 years ago

How do you know the sanctions on North Korea haven’t changed anything? It’s impossible to know what their behavior would have been in an alternate reality without sanctions.

cactus2093• 4 years ago

It's not like a lack of sanctions would change their behavior either though, maybe nothing we do will change their behavior. In that case they can do less damage to the rest of the world if they are poor and cut off than if they are rich and able to trade freely.

And there is still a chance sanctions will change their behavior even if in some cases like with NK it hasn't worked.

dragonwriter4• 4 years ago

It should be noted that sanctions have done nothing to change the behavior of North Korea's leadership to be more palatable to the West.

Sanctions aren't chosen because they are effective at changing behavior, but because they limit capacity if they fail to change behavior. The sanctions on Russia are not “we believe Putin will behave in response to the sanctions” but “we intend to destroy Russia’s economy and thereby limit it's ability to engage in aggression until and unless we are convinced that Putin has made a durable course correction.”

c-smile2• 4 years ago

ATGM position of Mariupol defenders:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4-zYV_6Tgk

I hope they have evacuated all residents from there. Even if no one left Mariupol through evacuation corridors.

keewee72• 4 years ago

WarGonzo is Russian state propaganda. How do we know those are Ukrainian defenders and not Russians pretending to Ukrainians?

speg• 4 years ago

My colleague with family in the region has said that the hospitals are evacuated and being used for logistics. Which might explain why they would be targeted.

This video being described as “difficult to watch” seems a lot like propaganda.

I don’t know what the truth is, but I know it’s not black and white.

guenthert• 4 years ago

That the Russians invaded Ukraine and not the other way 'round is pretty much black and white though.

hdjjhhvvhga• 4 years ago

The truth is Putin's troops invaded Ukraine and are killing innocent people every hour. And it's obvious that each day of this aggression will make this number higher and higher.

Schiendelman11• 4 years ago

Honestly, everyone in Ukraine has a right to be anywhere in Ukraine. If they do logistics in a hospital it doesn’t give Russia the right to bomb it - because Russia’s invasion isn’t in any way justifiable or legal.

pydry5• 4 years ago

Same thing happened in Gaza - Israel blamed Hamas of course:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-israeli-strike-damaged-g...

keewee72• 4 years ago

My colleague with family in the region

Just say he is Russian instead.

Which might explain why they would be targeted.

Why is it hard to believe that Russians would intentionally target Ukrainian hospitals? Have you seen what the Russian media and social media say about Ukrainians?

Russia literally bombed and killed 47 civilians waiting for food last week.

but I know it’s not black and white

Russia started an irredentist invasion of an independent democratic country.

How is that not black and white?

teekert3• 4 years ago

It's horrible, and I bet all well informed Russians will agree that it is. Who are "they"? I think it is mostly up to a small group of people. I feel it is important to not forget that, and not get lost in hatred and revenge. Which is easy to say from far away from the front, I know.

Schiendelman11• 4 years ago

“Well informed” is doing a lot of work there. The Russian equivalent of the American Republican is cheering this on, regardless of what information they have access to.

throwaway8943454• 4 years ago

I fully agree with cautioning people not to get consumed with hate/revenge or to project Putin/supporters' faults on all Russians, but it's quite a bit more complicated even among the folks who "agree that the war is horrible" will, over the course of a few exchanges, begin arguing that western aggression/expansionism forced Putin's hand and he's really just defending Russian sovereignty. Or else they "agree that the war is horrible" but then fixate on how bad the sanctions are and how the west is so awful for imposing those sanctions. So it definitely feels like a lot of the Russians who "agree that the war is horrible" don't really mean it, or at least implicitly think the Ukrainians have it good compared to the sanctioned Russians. Of course, there are Russians who sincerely think the war is horrible--they're out protesting bravely (criticizing the war is punishable by 15 years in prison per a new "misinformation" law); however, few of the Russians I've talked to who "oppose the war" have anything good to say about these protesters.

rich_sasha2• 4 years ago

It is of course true that the "average Russian" is not shelling Mariupol, is not an oligarch, and may not even have voted for Putin. Voting and support numbers showing broad support for Putin, if accurate and genuine, should be seen in the context of Russian propaganda.

And yet... this is the first time that Russians experience the anguish they have caused to Central and Eastern Europe over the past 80 years. USSR caused untold misery, to Russians too, but to its non-Russian subjects mostly. Economies were exploited, lives and bones were broken, culture subdued. Attempts to leave USSR be peaceful means were violently quashed, such as in Czechoslovakia in 1968, Hungary in 1956, and lots of smaller events along the way. Pro-USSR sentiment in Russia remains strong, as was support for annexation of Crimea.

At some point, "ordinary Russians" need to understand that the "Russian empire" machine they support, by sentiment if not democratic votes, brings misery and destruction to all who stand in its way.

In my experience, this sentiment is also not limited to "domestic-only" Russians, who perhaps lack access to "different bias" sources of information. I knew a number of highly educated and intelligent Russians living in the West, who still drank the kool aid.

I'm not saying, it's their turn to suffer, but for this reason I'm struggling to muster depths of sympathy.

kilotaras• 4 years ago

It's horrible, and I bet all well informed Russians will agree that it is.

One of the heavy pregnant woman photographed there has her instagram full of hundreds of Russians calling her a crisis actor, wishing her and her (yet unborn) child death and being raped. [0]

That's also the position of Russia MFA [1]

[0] https://twitter.com/ComeGentleNight/status/15019005935977185...

[1] https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/150192182043753676...

throwaway8943454• 4 years ago

When people say stuff like this, I'm inclined to make the distinction between the Russian state and the Russian people. Russia isn't a democracy, so its actions don't necessarily represent the will of the Russian people. And indeed, tens of thousands risk imprisonment by protesting the war, and this gives me hope. However, I've been really bummed lurking on r/AskARussian where many Russians perspectives read like, "I don't like Putin and I don't support this war but the sanctions are worse and the evil West forced Putin's hand and actually Putin is a hero and I love him and support the war". Even still, I don't want Russia to be cut off from the rest of the world, but I also want Putin's murderous conquest to be stopped.

chernevik3• 4 years ago

No one is better positioned to end this than the Russian people. I don't see how they can be absolved of that responsibility.

Schiendelman11• 4 years ago

The Russian people are the only ones that can stop this. It’s their fight, they created their government.

toyg5• 4 years ago

Remember that the first victim of war is the truth. Putin deserves scorn for starting an unnecessary fight that will inflict unnecessary suffering on millions, but focusing on individual acts is basically meaningless, because they'll be spun to death on both sides.

Schiendelman11• 4 years ago

I’m not sure that it matters how much a country defending itself spins things. If the invaders don’t want spin, they can go back to their (unbombed) homes.

VictorPath• 4 years ago

US-armed Israel was bombing hospitals and clinics in Gaza last year.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MSF/status/1393868206566223872

Of course Israel said Palestinians they were fighting were nearby, but that is what the Russians are saying too.

I don't remember the maudlin, mawkish melodrama of hospitals and clinics being bombed by a US armed country being such a big deal in the US last year.

Actually Biden's team is in Saudi Arabia right now discussing a deal for Saudi Arabia to export more oil if the US drops its minimal sanctions last year relating to its bloody war in Yemen and disembowlment of a Washington Post reporter in a Turkish embassy.

dragonmost2• 4 years ago

paywall free https://archive.ph/mWWhJ

marstall• 4 years ago

wow, straight up running their own obtrusive ads on it no less.

dragonmost2• 4 years ago

Didn't know they had this kind of ads since I'm using adblock. I agree this is pretty bad.

71a54xd2• 4 years ago

Brain drain is Russia's largest existential problem. I've worked with a number of intelligent folks who attended the state funded technical universities in Russia - most of them are sharp, however anecdotally most of the most pervasive cheaters were also Russian international students while I was in college.

The issue is that now due to currency devaluing and most modern companies / orgs refusing to cooperate with Russian companies, not factoring in banking / capital flows, there are very few reasons for people with skills to remain in Russia or grow their skills in Russia. Without smart young people helping to push Russia forward, not just tech wise but in most technically hard industries, the outlook for Russians are not good. Why work somewhere where your compensation for time could be worth nothing or denied by the rest of the western world?

That said, I think the west fails to understand how similar young Russians still are to their parents from the Soviet era. For instance, unlike the US most Russians even in the current generation attend a state university, party and drink like crazy until they attend college and shortly after college get married and immediately have children. This is also consistent across a huge swath of fields. For instance, I have friends who are artists / florists who have two kids at 24. This kind of culture is not necessarily aligned with fleeing the country to the west. One of the most fascinating traits of my young Russian friends (most of whom are artists) is their denial or confusion of being "proudly russian", even prior to Ukraine many seemed embarrassed to be proud of their country.

ct0• 4 years ago

It makes sense but unfortunately it will be difficult for any NATO company to hire a Russian born citizen for fear of hiring a spy. Same issue exists for anyone born in a dictatorship.

71a54xd2• 4 years ago

Ironically, China hasn't seemed to have this issue for the past decade. Especially at government funded universities.

umanwizard3• 4 years ago

All tech companies I’ve worked at happily hire anyone regardless of their national origin, as long as there aren’t specific sanctions banning them from being hired.

CoastalCoder• 4 years ago

I genuinely struggle to understand what people mean by being "proud" of one's country. Could you elaborate?

Maybe I'm focusing on a different aspect than most people. I understand the emotion of pride. But people seem to often be encouraging pride in some group or development.

I can see why such encouragement makes sense when the audience meaningfully contributed to that praiseworthy state of affairs. But I don't see the justification for that for e.g. happening to have been born in a particular country.

mc322• 4 years ago

I think you may need to experience people’s opinions from non western countries.

Often people from poor countries feel greater pride in their countries than people from advanced economies.

If you talk about the bad things in the US a great many would nod in agreement.

Do the same to someone who lives in Azerbaijan, China. Iran, Belarus, etc and you risk more pushback.

avgDev3• 4 years ago

I have a dual citizen Polish-American, I was born in Poland and I think I can answer this. I wasn't proud of being born in Poland until I went back in my 20's and went to the concentration camps and learned a bit more about the history. Poles are extremely resilient people and have a vast history. Seeing other poles do well in tech space, sports and now helping people from Ukraine just makes me feel good and happy.

danans• 4 years ago

most of them are sharp, however anecdotally most of the most pervasive cheaters were also Russian international students while I was in college.

We should remember that this is the result of the incentive systems they have had and the examples of material success (i.e. oligarchs) in the overtly kleptocratic system they inhabit, and not some kind of inherent cultural tendency of Russians. This is especially the case at this moment, when there is a tendency in the West to conflate Russians with the government of Russia.

For instance, unlike the US most Russians even in the current generation attend a state university, party and drink like crazy until they attend college and shortly after college get married and immediately have children. ... This kind of culture is not necessarily aligned with fleeing the country to the west.

What do you mean by "not necessarily aligned"? The US has plenty of people who marry young and have kids. They disproportionately tend to be less formally educated, though.

Are you saying that young university-educated and married+kids Russians migrants don't fit in with their similarly educated contemporaries in developed countries? That also seems unlikely because that profile fits most educated migrants (i.e from India and China) to western countries.

sturza• 4 years ago

But, what is his gain? I cannot figure it out.

qaq• 4 years ago

staying in power in light of this huge miscalculation

nine_zeros• 4 years ago

Pride on his deathbed. He is old and wants to go with glory, at the expense of young Russians' future of course.

mint2• 4 years ago

The pictures that are coming out of this are shocking, if Russians were allowed to view them they’d turn on Putin instantly. If the pictures of Ukrainian suffering didn’t do that then the ones of fallen russians would. Beyond senseless and horrific all because Putin bought his own lies.

pier253• 4 years ago

At this point I think he thought getting into Ukraine would be a walk in the park, and the sanctions would be minimal. And now... he's just too proud to back down so he just keeps pushing further.

pydry5• 4 years ago

I think he'd prefer to own it, but I think he'd prefer to destroy the country rather than see it become part of NATO.

Mariupol and Melitopol in particular are exceptionally strategic locations. This video does a good job of explaining why the land bridge to Crimea is so important to Russia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwzliJF0-SI

AnimalMuppet• 4 years ago

I don't think it's just pride. I think that he thinks he can't afford to take the loss - it will weaken his position too much. (His position within Russia, not his position externally. Putin is terrified of a color revolution in Russia.)

AlexandrB• 4 years ago

There's a difference between what Putin hoped to gain, and what he will actually gain. I suspect that Putin thought this would be a cakewalk and he hoped to gain territory in Ukraine. Instead, this is increasingly looking like a huge blunder for the Russian state.

The name of the game now is probably self-preservation and saving-face for the Putin government. What "self-preservation" means to Putin is hard to guess but an embarrassing retreat from Ukraine doesn't seem like it's on the table yet.

rcMgD2BwE72F3• 4 years ago

China's support while Russia negotiate Ukraine permanent neutrality with NATO/EU (with troops on the field).

What's the price of Ukraine as a non-Western state? I'm surprised we can spend hours valuing the cost of the sanctions but few can put a price on what Putin has been asking for.

thinkingemote• 4 years ago

The price is similar to giving your pocket money to the school bully. It's not just a one time price.

Perhaps if the message is "I'm not a bully, I'm a school monitor with a badge to prove it" maybe it's different.

The best question to pose oneself is, if NATO was such a bully instead, where is the moral, good, international aid, charity, role model and respect that Putin has performed in times of peace? Where is his school monitor badge that he should have got?

vkou5• 4 years ago

In the current situation his main objective is not losing face.

Two weeks ago his goal was a land grab.

toyg5• 4 years ago

ITT: people with no experience of combat who think wars are solved in two weeks. The Iraqi desert spoiled us, but surely we still remember Afghanistan...?

If anybody in the Russian army is worth half a ruble, they planned this to take months at least. They came straight out of engagements in Syria and Chechnya, which took years to turn. Whether they told their troops (who, in Russia, are synonim with "cannon fodder" since forever) is another matter, of course.

treis2• 4 years ago

For as long as there's been a Russian Empire Crimea has been either an aspiration or a strategic territory. It's the key to controlling the Black Sea and projecting power in SE Europe and the Caucauses. To some extent, it's the crown jewel of the Russian Empire. If you're an emperor (which Putin essentially is) it's very hard to explain away losing your crown jewel. It shatters the myth of a resurgent/strong Russia and would be an existential threat to Putin's regime.

That's the why. Why now is a little bit trickier. But I think it's because of a fundamental weakness. Russia's military is essentially still the Soviet military. It's a decaying force using last generation military technology that is rapidly being left behind. MANPADs (infantry mobile air defense) & Javelins (anti-tank missiles) have all but rendered their planes, helicopters, and tanks obsolete. And, as a country, they are too corrupt and poor to modernize their military.

They're going to win this war but it's obvious that they're mustering about the best invasion force they can and even then it's been a slow moving brutal war. Five more years of Russian decay and Ukrainian modernization would bring the outcome into doubt. Ten years and maybe it's impossible.

cmurf2• 4 years ago

Russia isn't going to win this war, short of using weapons of mass destruction. They don't have the manpower. They walk troops into Kyiv and they will be slaughtered by the Ukrainian military. The only way Russia wins this war is to obliterate Ukraine, and raise the deaths by multiple orders of magnitude from what we've seen so far. Hundreds of thousands per day or more.

And I rather expect Putin will try to do exactly that, and we see carnage the world hasn't seen since the last world war to try and goad NATO into reacting. What we need is for the U.N. general assembly to catch up with what's going on. It's not enough to just condemn the invasion. The purpose of the U.N. is to prevent world wars and right now they're not doing enough.

tayistay• 4 years ago

Survival of his regime, as best I can tell. When a reasonably functional democracy (Ukraine) abuts an autocracy (Russia), the democracy starts to make the autocracy look bad in the eyes of those living in it, threatening the autocrat's power. Putin seems to have over-estimated the risk (paranoia perhaps), but this seems to be a typical dynamic which is also playing out between China and Taiwan.

dirtyid4• 4 years ago

Extending long term military, political, even economic security in face of declining/terminal demographics. It's an existential gamble for a bigger RU light cone. The alternative framing is there was much more to lose. RU is better off losing 20 years of progress than 200 years of future security. A few generations doomed to middle income is one of the milder calamity in terms of costly historical RU mistakes.

I think people overlook how rational the geopolitical calculus is, it's only shocking because eating so much short/medium term loss is counter to the interest of a "compromised" leader, i.e. one who has to answer to the public. My feeling is Putin has simply secured so much power that he can do what most leaders can not, pursue long term geopolitically maximizing gamble and survive it. I doubt he'll be deposed - no one wants to inherit this shitshow.

Also history rarely looks down on leaders who regain lost land, especially one of such cultural importance as UKR is to RU. If Putin can hold on to UKR, he'll have statues built of him for centuries and impartial historians 100 years from now will likely evaluate his conquest favorably.

In the meantime, the real question is ask what the west will lose not accommodating RU interests and maintaining sanctions comparable to a blockade. RU hasn't even began retaliating yet, they can (IMO will) extract disportionate cost from 40Trillion western block economy versus what the west block can punish a 1.5T RU economy.

zozbot2342• 4 years ago

Russia is facing existential risks now that it wasn't as late as one month ago. If the Soviets couldn't "hold" to AFG, there's no way he can hold UKR. The "long term geo-politically maximizing" strategy here is quite clear, just look at what China has managed to achieve in the past 30 or 40 years. Russia may have made big mistakes before, but that does not exactly help if they keep making big mistakes.

rado2• 4 years ago

In a word: buffer.

nickpp• 4 years ago

Buffer to what? Russia already has a sizable NATO border.

klelatti3• 4 years ago

This is an interesting take on Putin's miscalculation in Ukraine.

He's a spy, not a soldier. He relies on subterfuge and fabrication. And he's being undone as his fabricated and delusional view of Ukraine, Russia and the world bangs up against reality.

https://samf.substack.com/p/giving-peace-a-chance

randito• 4 years ago

Here's a great Twitter thread that digs into how poor tires are an indicator of poor maintenance: https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1499164245250002944

dirtyid4• 4 years ago

Which doesn't reveal much. Underfunded military undermined by graft performing incompetently after period of peace is textbook Russia military adventurism. This has been happening for 100s of years. Important thing is RU military tends to get it's shit together under pressure and typically win, even if at stupendous costs. Most of RU equipment loss so far has been due to breakdowns, which is not surprising because shocking amount RU kit fall apart even during their military exercises. They have so many USSR era chassis in storage that doctrine is just to abandon. USSR / RU hardware in general are not engineered for longevity due to tech gap / low costs with assumption that they won't have long lifespan on the battlefield.

mwattsun• 4 years ago

without paywall: https://archive.ph/mWWhJ

In today's news:

"I assure you, we will overcome adversity, and we will do everything to no longer depend on the West in any strategic sectors of our life that are of decisive importance for our people".

- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

klelatti3• 4 years ago

In other news Lavrov's stepdaughter has a £4 million flat in the most upmarket area of London - well she has it at the moment, for how much longer who knows.

rcMgD2BwE72F3• 4 years ago

Putin has deep pockets and can provide Lavrov's family (or any other sanctioned person) with far more expensive stuff wherever China has more influence that the West. That sphere of influence will expand over time. I wouldn't doubt that Kong Kong, or some other rich Asian cities, will welcome oligarch. This war is a huge transfer of power to the East.

IYasha• 4 years ago

Putin is pushing, Putin started, Putin invaded... Trump announced, Biden sanctioned... Guys, really, it's not 1900s anymore, we do understand that they don't make decisions, right? Terrible thing is that russians think America is behind the curtains (I asked), EU and US think Putin is crazy (also asked), and only handful of people understands that this terrible conflict is played out by globalists who were year by year buying out Ukraine's soil. Kind of alike to what Turkey and Britain are doing to the North Cyprus. No one cares about population there - only territory! It's just terrible!

sidibe3• 4 years ago

Did you just read War and Peace or something? This was Putin's choice.

chernevik3• 4 years ago

As urgent as the Ukraine invasion is, we should find attention for Taiwan.

Mainland China's claims on Taiwan are if anything more belligerent than Russia's claims on Ukraine have been. China has been building up the ability to cross the Taiwan Strait for decades. And its indifference for human rights and international law is clear.

The world must give thought, now, to how it deters China from invading Taiwan.

google234123• 4 years ago

Arm them with nuclear weapons and have them increase their defense spending and investment in themselves.. Become Israel basically, and fast!

Get gun ownership up to 25% like Switzerland.

ashwagary• 4 years ago

Arm them with nuclear weapons

The reality is problematic for Taiwan, they are so dependant on the Chinese economy that any major pivot that results in an economic war could halve or quarter their economic output in very little time.

They do not have enough leverage to take the stance you are putting forth.

bradgessler• 4 years ago

Could somebody describe what upward mobility looks like in Russia? I have a really hard time understanding it when I hear terminology like “kleptocrats” or “oligarchs”. At best I can generalize that upward mobility sucks in Russia, but I’d really like to hear a few narratives of what this looks like from people who actually grew up in Russia.

sershe• 4 years ago

Interestingly upward mobility in Russia (I moved out in 2008 but visited almost every year since, I guess not anymore) may be easier in a certain way, because education is free if you can pass exams, or otherwise cheap. Now on one hand, that means that most people don't value it, so most of my CS-major fellow students had no notion of CS, coding, or really much of anything IT-related by the end of their education... and many people I know have degrees in some random X that they got "because everyone does it" but they don't do X and never intend to (X can be marketing, or it can be biology, or whatever). On the other hand almost anyone who actually wants it can get decent education for ~free.

Then you get a job (in IT, often while still in college) and here's upward mobility :) There are obviously less jobs on every level of "upwards" compared to the USA, but there are still plenty. Many people also (used to?) freelance for Western customers. Until recently, if you don't engage in politics life was pretty good. One aspect of being upper middle class in Russia is that you are surrounded by cheap labor, so everything - healthcare, home improvement, nannies, etc. - is dirt cheap. E.g. you could have a reliable full-time live-in caretaker for an elderly person for like $500-600/month (before the recent ruble collapse) in Moscow; even cheaper in other cities I suspect.

Another peculiar aspect with Russia is that it's very centralized, so it really helps to move (imagine Silicon Valley -> Seattle/Austin/... -> the rest - type centralization, but with an even steeper salary gradient and for nearly ALL jobs, not just IT). Ideally you want to be in Moscow; some other major cities (Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk) are also not so bad but people still move to Moscow if they can.

Vladimir Putin is pushing Russia into past: Maybe a generation, maybe a century

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