Kseniya Kirillova: The Harsh Realities of Russian-Occupied Ukraine
The Russian opposition politician Maksim Kats highlighted comments by the reliably pro-Kremlin Army General and State Duma deputy Andrey Gurulev, who had admitted that there is an extremely low standard of living in Russia's notoriously impoverished regions, including the Far East. The situation is even worse in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, Kats said.
Even in Mariupol, which is used by the Kremlin as a postcard for Russia's supposed rebuilding of Donbas, entire blocks still lie in ruins, and the few houses constructed by the occupiers are poor quality with “cracks covering the walls only a year after the buildings were finished,” Kats said. People who lost their homes have not been compensated but have been invited to buy apartments in the new buildings, while in other destroyed cities, no housing is being built at all.
The absolute failure of the Russian state to manage the simplest elements of governance is a warning to those in the West who believe the Kremlin offers “liberation” to its Russian-speaking peoples. Rather, it consigns everyone of whatever mother tongue, pro-occupation or Ukrainian loyalist, to mismanagement and misery. Moscow also has to find resources for the problems in Russia’s own regions. Siberia has been hit by devastating hurricanes and fires, for example, and tens of thousands of residents of the Altai, Kuzbass, Khakassia, Novosibirsk, and Irkutsk regions left without electricity.
https://cepa.org/article/the-harsh-realities-of-russian-occupied-ukraine/
