This one comes from Deutsche Welle, a propaganda arm of the Federative Republic of Germany, specifically its Ukrainian language office…
Basically, ordinary Ukrainians, whose salaries and pensions are already meagre, are forced to spend enormous sums from these minuscule gains of theirs on necessities that in Ukraine aren’t exactly cheap.
Insomniac Resurrected 
Imagine if they tried to increase the retirement age to 65 for men as Russia are doing?….there would be even more chaos.
The gas tariff , having already gone up by 40%, will go up by another significant amount next year , too
What gets forgotten ( or rather, never made a case of by Russia’s inept and probably 5th column, English speaking think-tanks “experts”, English-language media and others) is that Ukraine, for an artificial state that is supposedly trying to “westernise”…on everything from pensions, corruption, democracy, legal system, public sending, transparency, roads, wages, business rankings,health, crime and so on…Russia completely wipes the floor with Ukraine on all these issues.
In other words, if you associate these issues being positively resolved as “westernising” then Russia is and always has been significantly more westernised than Ukraine…and this gap has actually significantly increased since the coup d’etat
LikeLike
I am no fan of Russia, or the way it is being currently governed. It has many of the same problems Ukraine has. But I am not going to engage with you in a whataboutist discussion.
LikeLike
In what way are you not a fan, may I ask? From the communist point of view (for instance you don’t think there is enough public expenditure and that the government is in full tandem with the oligarchs)? the liberast/western economic point of view ( all this tosh about “no rule of law” so on? Nationalist? Or do you think that successful governance of Russia depends on balancing out all three of these ways?
If you are not a fan of Russia or the way it is being governed, then what is the goal of your blog, particularly as it is clearly Russia-based?
“It has many of the same problems Ukraine has”, well, that was pretty much my point. Effectively the same people with the same mentality and the same problems…….but there is no way you can objectively deny that Russia has done a much better job at sorting them out , than Ukraine has. Take roads as an issue. It’s beyond dispute that Russian roads are not among the best in the world…but that doesn’t take away the fact that Ukraine’s are much worse, Russia’s are improving significantly…or that Russia’s bad roads can be (partially) explained by it’s gigantic size and , of course, weather conditions
both have problems with corruption, but you can’t seriously dispute that Ukraine is far, far more corrupt, and that Russia’s multi-ethnic nature makes it harder to deal with corruption
LikeLike
I am not Russia based, I am based in the Czech Republic if you want details. I am not a fan of Russian governance, I believe Russia lacks freedom, lacks communication, and lacks direction. That said however, despite all this, Russia seems to manage well. Unlike Ukraine, Russia is under international pressure, and does not benefit from the concern and help of Western countries. Although one sceptical that Ukraine benefits from her relationship with the West.
I probably haven’t understood well your previous comment. Speaking of increasing retirement age in Russia, it speaks of tightening the grip. And coincidently, one of my aunts dated for a while the head of the Pension Fund, he is a thief. They basically stole the old people’s money… well done. And you ask me to have respect for Russia?
The Russian Federation is such a pathetic mess, they were able to allow America to create out of Ukraine a base of operations for Western interests against Russia. A country, where the majority of people speak and think in Russian, as evidenced by Gallup, Google and this blog.
LikeLike