Corrupt shithole but a functioning one (not bankrupt, can defend itself, lunatics can't fire nuclear warheads and super beautiful girls).

This post was edited by babun1024 on Feb 8 2024 08:27am

I'd say it is corrupted at the level unreachable by the 99% of it's population so the average Russian won't even notice how rotten the country actually is while the most cases of corruption they face is being handled with a finger snap.

Could it be worse? Sure. And a lot of Russians have lived through times when things were worse than they are right now. Still: the country has low life expectancy, a pitiful healthcare system, some 40% of their population live in bitter poverty and some 15% of the population haven't seen a toilet with running water in their entire life.

A lot of people get massive state subsidy or state pensions that Putin ensures continue.

A vast majority Russian people are not just ignorant of the corruption and kleptocracy, they are complicit.

The toilet point that keeps getting brought up is one of the dumber ones tbh.

>Fresh take: country the size of a large continent can’t provide plumbing for all.

Like lol, I can’t believe this is actually something that keeps surfacing.

I'd be curious to know what percent of Canadians / Americans lack access to plumbing.

I wonder how utilities in Siberia compare to Northern Canada

Many people talk about the deplorable conditions in many Indiginous settlements here but never to shit on Canada

I absolutely use that to shit on Canada.

Haha that's fair, people often do, I was more thinking about how people don't often use it to criticize the Trudeau regime especially if they're aligned with the left (because it really isn't in Trudeau's control, much like how the conditions in Siberia are largely out of Putin's control)

Really though the north is mostly semi-autonomous regions that have to provide for themselves and not having plumbing isn't a concern for these old school natives

Those were called the 1990s - “A decade of humiliation”. A laissez-faire capitalism of proportions never seen before unleashed on a country that didn’t have a concept of private property yesterday. It is a miracle Russia managed not to splinter considering how badly it was run by Yeltsin’s “democratic” advisors. Don’t forget that Russia decided to inherit all foreign debt of USSR so new republics that emerged from this collapse got all their infrastructure for free. Steel smelters, nuclear and hydro plants, roads, airports, refineries, ports, pipelines. All of that - for free.

Remember when GDR got united with FRG? Pension and savings of the little peoples were converted so they could eat and retire with dignity. Pensions and savings of all Russians got zeroed in one fell swoop of “Shock Therapy” of the 1990s. Imagine losing everything you owned for no fault of your own, while ThyssenKrupp - where you worked your whole life - gets sold to a 20 year old american hotshot for three colas and two packs of bubblegum. You could buy anything in Russia in the 1990s. Slaves, submarines, hitmen, whole cities were essentially for sale to the right buyer. “Humiliating” doesn’t even begin to describe this. This is what Putin meant when he said that “collapse of the USSR was a tragedy”. He doesn’t want to restore the empire, he acknowledges the injustice that was perpetrated as a part of history of Russia that is behind them now.

This post was edited by Malopox on Feb 8 2024 11:19am