They say everything is under control. The state television channels flicker with confidence: inflation is down, the economy is recovering, foreign companies are returning. All that’s left is to determine who is worthy of returning - then, they promise, a new golden era will begin. But anyone standing in front of a fridge in Russia today sees no comeback. They see emptiness.
Because what the cameras don’t show: onions cost twice as much as a year ago, potatoes have become a luxury item. The prices of bread, milk, fish, vegetables - everything that’s supposed to end up on the tables of ordinary people every day - have exploded. The official inflation rate might sit at ten percent, but it doesn’t tell the whole truth. It’s like an average fever measured across a hospital full of patients - one is freezing, another is burning. In reality, there are two inflations: one for the rich, one for the poor. Someone who spends 20 percent of their income on food lives in a different world than those who need 60 or even 70 percent for the same. The latter, according to the UN, are in “extreme poverty.” In Russia, one of the most unequal countries in the world, this reality affects millions - in Moscow as well as in Magnitogorsk.
Rosstat, the national statistics agency, says: everything is fine. But Rosstat only surveys the big players. Small shops, market stalls, neighborhood bakeries - they’re missing from the calculations. Their prices aren’t known to the statistics, but every mother with an empty wallet knows them well. And the picture isn’t any better when it comes to wages: officially, they’re rising. But that only applies to corporations. The mechanic in the garage, the seamstress without a contract, the self-employed handyman? To Rosstat, they don’t exist. Yet they already make up more than 20 percent of the working population.
The real reason for all of this lies not in the weather, not in the market, but in the war. Russia devours nearly a third of its state revenue for its military apparatus. The civilian economy has become a sideshow, a footnote. Those who once built televisions now produce tank parts. Those who once exported grain now falsify records to bypass sanctions. There’s a shortage of everything - not just of goods, but of future. The rich hoard their money in savings accounts with dream interest rates. The poor take out microloans with ruinous rates. And both groups - as different as they are - live in a permanent state of scarcity. Companies no longer invest in anything new, only in what’s absolutely necessary. Like a poor person who knows tomorrow won’t be any better.
The central bank keeps interest rates high to curb inflation. But it can only suppress civilian consumption - not the appetite of war. And so the country lives in a paradox: industrial prices are falling because the state pays. Consumer prices are rising because the state doesn’t deliver. War is the center of economic gravity. And if it ever ends, it won’t be with a sigh of relief, but with a quake. Because then hundreds of thousands of soldiers will return home - traumatized, trained in weapons, but without perspective. And then the factory that used to assemble drones around the clock will shut down. The men will be left standing in the street - without jobs, without direction, but with experience in killing.
The government knows this. That’s why it doles out promises: free college places, government jobs, privileges for war veterans. But these are band-aids on shattered walls. The real cracks run deeper: between veterans and civilians, between cities and the countryside, between realities.
Russia’s economy stands still because it’s trapped in marching order. And even if the march ends, the rhythm won’t fade away immediately. What remains is a country suffocating on its own armor - while inside the fridge, the cold chills nothing anymore except hope.
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