You're joking, but they've just opened regular flights from Moscow to Pyongyang, so watch this space!Niall's next "Orwellian" trip: North Korea!
"We were greeted by Kim as we exited the airplane..."
New show: NewsReal with Joe & Niall
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But Russia isn't a Western country in terms of longer term development. 20 years ago I'd say a lot of it was in a pretty poor state of repair. How much has Putin and Co. really been able to do since then, not only on the economic front but on the corrupt front?
So I'd say it's an open question as to what other smaller cities and towns are like across Russia, and that can't necessarily be inferred from looking at Moscow or St. Pete. Maybe some Russian members can let us know if they've been out to the boondocks.
Google street view only gets you so far, but from what I've seen it's a bit of a mixed bag. I used to spend some time 'driving' down street view maps of Russian towns and, on most occasions, I ended up playing a game I called "spot the house that doesn't have a rusty corrugated metal roof".
From what I heard from Russians that either lived there or are still going there from time to time or are living in Russia: It is a land of extremes.
Partly that’s because of its enormous size. Moscow and St. Petersburg in particular are the most developed and “western like“ areas, while other parts (especially in rural and far away places) can be VERY different in many respects also in terms of corruption. Corruption and living conditions any westerner would find hard to comprehend.
Having said that I think what Putin and company have accomplished especially under such circumstances (in that time frame with such a complex and huge country, in general) seems to be nothing short of a miracle! And I do think a certain morality/spirit in the Russian population as whole must have aided that to a significant respect too. Good leadership can only go so far.
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Thanks for sharing! Now the million dollar question:
What have you experienced in terms of smoking and tobacco?
Officially: No smoking signs everywhere. Actually: I was only told once to 'move over there' to smoke.
'Tabak' and 'vape' stores everywhere, and something like the same ratio of smokers to non-smokers as in western EU: ~20%
I don't know whether this journalist is trying to paint a particularly negative picture, but the footage kind of speaks for itself too. There seems to be a huge difference between the big cities and the countryside.
I've heard some Westerners mention that too. Many more people have it GREAT (in the cities and close to them), others really struggle.
Maybe our Russian members can tell us how they see it?
I saw the same in China and Argentina when living there. Maybe it's a symptom of "gigantism", like Lobaczewski talked about. You can do a lot in the centers of power, but 10 or even 30 years may be too short a time to make such a giant country prosper and have less corruption everywhere.
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I've heard some Westerners mention that too. Many more people have it GREAT (in the cities and close to them), others really struggle.
Maybe our Russian members can tell us how they see it?
I saw the same in China and Argentina when living there. Maybe it's a symptom of "gigantism", like Lobaczewski talked about. You can do a lot in the centers of power, but 10 or even 30 years may be too short a time to make such a giant country prosper and have less corruption everywhere.
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Thank you for your summary of impressions and thoughts. With regard to the critizism that you can not know about Russia from just 2 weeks, which is a valid critique, we should also remember that when we ourselves say that we have been somewhere outside of our native countries. The same questions can be leveled as "how long", did you travel around or just in the cities or on the beaches and the tourist attractions etc." We get impressions which are filtered through our own viewpoint and which will inevitably be subjective. Blending with the locals, speaking the language and staying for longer helps but still impressions will be subjective no matter what. I think it was great that you went and also appreciate your destilling of it.
On the show you mentioned roadwork in Moscow in Tverskaya street (the main street in Moscow) and interestingly enough it came up on my feed on X after the show. Today I looked for it and found the same video though it was from a different account and in German. Here it is:
and here how it looked in 1896.
Some time ago I shared my perspective on a similar topic in this thread, since I currently live in Novosibirsk. It's the third largest city after Moscow and St. Petersburg. Here's the relevant part:
Here's a video as an example of how some districts in Novosibirsk look like. The video was taken a year ago.
In comparison, I live in a neighborhood that has much more modern buildings.
I agree. Moscow or St. Petersburg are the face of Russia, so they have to be pretty and well-maintained. But since Russia is huge, there are a lot of cities and places that look exactly like the videos above that perhaps try to present a negative image of Russia.
For example, in comparison to many places in the West of the US, Russia has a really fast and cheap internet infrastructure. Recently it has been ruined due to draconian and asinine measures by the Russian communication inquisition (Roscomnadzor) that conducts various blocking experiments primarily in the Siberian and Urals areas, but the general consensus still holds.
Most of the cities in Russia have well-developed communication and internet infrastructures, not to mention other comfort services, including super fast groceries deliveries, mass market deliveries, doorstep blood tests, etc. But there are a lot of smaller places that still lack all of these things.
5 years ago there was a story about a student who lives in a very small village (population 68 people) 200 km near Omsk (Siberia), who had to climb a tree in order to get reception and listen to lectures during Siberian winter, because due to covid everyone was sent home for remote education. The situation was solved after he wrote a desperate letter to the governor.
Another example would be gas. Russia has huge gas reserves, and yet there are entire regions, including in Siberia, that lack gas infrastructure.
This is the unfortunate reality of a huge country that only now starts to recover from deep problems. And since there is still a lot of corruption, which is also hard to totally uproot in such a huge country, there is no doubt that all kind of things will continue to persist.
I think that this was one of the reasons why Putin back in 2013 signed a law that allowed him to pick governors. This was probably the only way to fight against local interests. Regardless, it's obvious that even this system isn't perfect, but we do hear more and more about various demotions and arrests of high level officials.
Of course there are a lot of problems, but in general life in current Russia is very comfortable.
Regarding the security measures in the city, it seems to me that if I lived there I'd feel more comfortable with them than without. I see stories regularly enough these days about thwarted bomb plots or other terrorist actions in Russia, and we know that there have been successful more or less high profile incidents. As Ukraine and its handlers lose in open warfare, they talk about assymetric actions and that means using people inside the country, living among the population. We're talking about a real threat here, not the manufactured kind of state sponsored stuff we're used to in Western Europe.
Interesting, thanks.
So we've heard about major progress in Russia's big two cities, destitution in entire villages of the Tver region between those two cities, and relative stagnancy in Russia's third city.
I'm interested in how things are going in its 'small cities', cities that would actually be quite large by west European standards. These are the kinds of "mid-sized cities" that the vast majority of Russia's population lives in.
Here's a snapshot of life today in Keremovo, a city of 600,000 people, and which is located about 200km east of Novosibirsk, Siberia, from two people who know the city well, and one of whom grew up there as a child:
