WeekendJen t1_j40d9hu wrote
Reply to comment by CathrynMcCoy in Russia restricts conscripts from leaving the country by HarakenQQ
>How is the situation in grocery stores?
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>Is there enough food for everyone?
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>Can you buy stuff you need on a daily basis?
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>Yes to all of this, you can still get all of you daily needs easily. There are some brands that have left or are getting harder to find, but there are alternate brands, and a lot of the brands that left were not considered "daily necessity" type things anyway, but more "middle class nice to have" brands.
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>How is the mood in the general public?
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>Dumb as fucking shit and in denial about everything and still believe putin is a good guy, did so many great things, NATO hates us, we strongk, everything is fine. A few starting to wonder like why do they need to mobilize if everything is fine? Where are the initial people? but for the most part still align with the "eh whatever, they must have had a reason to invade" line of thought. This is 30s-40s age bracket. They do however have markedly less smugness and bravado about everything compared to the beginning of the war, so deep down I guess they know they are losing, even if they end up "winning" after 10 years of lobbing bombs or something.
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>How do teenagers deal with the sanctions and the loss of certain brands or fast food chains?
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>Teenagers don't have the capital spending and market influence that they have in the US. For clothing, it's not a big deal. Knockoff sportswear is super common and not looked down on, it's just some clothes that people pick because they like the color of the sweatsuit or whatever (and it's not just like nike or adidas, I see supreme and off white knock offs daily). Most people couldn't afford new iphones or samsungs so enough can be roundabout imported to support the market for those. Most people use chinese brands' smartphones and a lot of older people still have flip phones. Noone cares about the fast food chains leaving because they have been replaced and are nearly identical in flavor as most of the food supplies were from in the country anyway and people are too dense to realize it's not the loss of the cuisine that would be the issue it's the loss of foreign investment. Also, fast food is definitely not the cheapest meal out option, so it is again a middle class nice to have thing rather than a basic meal for people on a budget. Prices for electronics went up really steeply at teh beginning of the war.
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>Can you still access all internet sites or is there a regulation?
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>There was never a time when you could access all internet sites for at least a few years. VPNs are common knowledge amongst younger people. Older people feel like they can find anything they need because they have been primed to poorly adapt to changing info spaces and also to believe that every other country is just as censored and has as much government media control and bias (or usually even more).
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>Can you watch news on TV or is it controlled by the Kreml?
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>TV is 100% controlled. They have been prepping minds and romanticizing war for a while. There are a bunch of channels that play movies by genre, think romance channel, comedy channel, etc. For a few years there have been channels that play exclusively war movies (and it's called "victory channel) and exclusively movies make nostalgia of life in the USSR or life in small cut off rural villages. NEVER anti-war movies like come and see. Always some crap like a romance story in the time of war. A few "safe" channels are the zoo channel, the kids channel, and the space channel. I havent had a chance to see if disney, paramount, and some other western production company channels still work in a while as I don't know anyone who has extended channel packages or whatever to get special channels.
CathrynMcCoy t1_j40loyv wrote
Thank you very much about the detailed answer. Looks like the sanctions are not affecting the citizen as much as they were supposed to.
Two more questions:
How is the Covid situation?
How does the government explain soldiers not coming home?
WeekendJen t1_j40u6ts wrote
no problem. I think the sanctions weren't really designed to affect citizens as much as industry. For things like ikea, adidas, mcdonalds, disney, etc leaving the country, it was mostly an "image" thing but also tied to the banking sanctions making payments / profits more difficult to move in / out of the country around to different branches of the company and so on. The biggest effects I have noticed is definitely on cars. Once the lots are cleared you will need to go to another country to buy a car that is not a russian or chinese brand. Also parts for those korean, japanese, etc cars that already exist are getting squeezed and drying up.
Transferring money out of the country or paying for goods in another currency (like to buy something from europe and have it shipped) is very difficult to impossible for the average person. Alot of companies that used to ship wordwide now do not ship to russia.
Covid - I actually have no idea what the situation is like. I haven't seen much coverage of it. I would extrapolate from what I see about China having an outbreak and the new variant in the US that there is probably a covid season occurring, but maybe a little less severe since there's way fewer people traveling? Right now there are no covid restrictions / mask requirements, but a small few people do opt to wear them, esp now in winter cause it keeps your face warm anyway if outside from place to place. For the initial covid times, people wore masks and vaccines and boosters were free and easy to get. bigger cities required QR codes to prove vaccination and be allowed into non-necessity, high traffic areas. For example, my local mall has an Auchan (walmart grocery type store). Teh QR code scanner people were arranged so that you could go into the mall and enter the Auchan with no code check, but to go into the walkways to get to any other store you needed a QR code. most stand alone stores in the ground floors of apartments did not bother checking qr codes, even if they were inessential stores. The vaccination rate was low because a lot of people were superstitious about it and there was a lot of sanitation theater with like steaming railings in the communal stairways of buildings and stuff like that. I cant remember if they required the QR code on trains from city to city, I'm inclined to say no because I think i used one before I got my QR code (I was vaccinated in russia, but am not from russia so it was a little bit of beauracratic legwork to get me a QR code even after I had the booster).
Soldiers not coming home- Simply put, they dont. There will occasionally be profile pieces on a soldier who died about how they are a hero and show their family, sad but proud or whatever but there is not a consolidated story about how many aren't coming home. Comments in local news sites on such stories about people who died have started to turn mostly negative saying things like "and for what?". You also rarely see stories about soldiers who do come home as I imagine it's hard to get a feel good vibe from most of them for obvious reasons. The few I have seen involve people that were maimed and it highlights the help and rehab they are receiving (like some artificial limb etc.) and they seem to be trying to saying "see, we will take care of you!".
CathrynMcCoy t1_j40x54g wrote
Thank you very much for those details! We only ever get information third or fourth hand, this is actually a nice documentary about the true situation.
Do you consider to start an AMA sometime?
I can imagine people have questions and would want to understand what is really going on inside Russia.
Thanks again!
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