154

US confirms Trump ordered resumption of Ukraine military aid shipments (kyivindependent.com)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

We're in this mess precisely because things are good for the citizens of Russia though. The world embraced Putin with open arms and boosted the country's economy, invasion after invasion. Now it's too late for the sanctions to bear fruit. The Russians, especially the pro-Putin Russians with no direct ties to the West for the sanctions to affect them, live like it's business as usual.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the perception from within Russia, but I also doubt it's the case empirically and objectively. It was proobably good from 2000 to 2013 under Putin and then Medvedev, who was probably Putin's puppet president.

But now, their GDP per capita is stagnant, if not in decline while their population is decreasing, and their GINI index is similar to that of the US and China. That's a really bad combo. I can't imagine how quality of life would be improving under those conditions.

Having said that, there are better metrics like median salary and median household income both adjusted for purchasing power parity, but I haven't been able to find graphs for those. In fact it was kind of hard to find consistent economic data in general, which is another concern, but not really evidence of economic problems in and off itself.

I believe they're living like it's business as usual, but I'd attribute that to hypernormalization more than improvement in quality of life.