I travel a lot, both for work and leisure, and wherever there’s no travel restrictions for Russians, like Thailand, UAE, or Egypt, it’s simply overrun with Russian tourists. And they’re rich, too, with the latest iPhones, Apple Watches and all the other fashion brands.
As much as I’d like to see l say that Russia is feeling the impact of this war, empirically, I can’t say that it seems that way.
I watched a couple of YouTube videos from a normal guy who lives in Russia talking about what it was actually like to live in Russia around the time that Tucker Carlson did that weird state visit and he peeled back a layer of intentional propaganda that the American journalist was spreading - that Russians are living in some kind of luxury paradise. Sure, everything costs less over there, but people are also paid a lot less too. If you’re working class, it’s hard to afford enough food to put on the table sometimes. The rich, however, are not hurting for anything and a lot of big brand labels that said they would exit Russia just rebranded themselves or quietly re-entered the market after all the commotion about the war died down.
I didn’t mean to suggest that it isn’t affecting the ordinary, working class Russian. My observation is that there don’t appear to be any less affluent Russian tourists.
The richest people don’t care about the war, if groceries go up 25% that barely makes a dent. You won’t see the people who are actually suffering from this being tourists.
I travel a lot, both for work and leisure, and wherever there’s no travel restrictions for Russians, like Thailand, UAE, or Egypt, it’s simply overrun with Russian tourists. And they’re rich, too, with the latest iPhones, Apple Watches and all the other fashion brands.
As much as I’d like to see l say that Russia is feeling the impact of this war, empirically, I can’t say that it seems that way.
Classism is present in Russia too.
I watched a couple of YouTube videos from a normal guy who lives in Russia talking about what it was actually like to live in Russia around the time that Tucker Carlson did that weird state visit and he peeled back a layer of intentional propaganda that the American journalist was spreading - that Russians are living in some kind of luxury paradise. Sure, everything costs less over there, but people are also paid a lot less too. If you’re working class, it’s hard to afford enough food to put on the table sometimes. The rich, however, are not hurting for anything and a lot of big brand labels that said they would exit Russia just rebranded themselves or quietly re-entered the market after all the commotion about the war died down.
I didn’t mean to suggest that it isn’t affecting the ordinary, working class Russian. My observation is that there don’t appear to be any less affluent Russian tourists.
The richest people don’t care about the war, if groceries go up 25% that barely makes a dent. You won’t see the people who are actually suffering from this being tourists.
Yes, of course, and I agree; I was only remarking that there’s a demographic that doesn’t appear to be affected by this at all.