Life in Ukraine is a horror show these days, but life in Russia ain’t no walk in the park either. Beyond frivilous matters like the non-McDonald’s situation, economic matters are dire following an unceasing stream of sanctions meant to put the screws to Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, it’s not unheard of for a prominent oil exec to mysterously fall to his death after criticizing Putin’s imperialistic attacks on Ukraine, and Putin’s own troops are reportedly shooting themselves to earn a ticket out of Hell.
The Daily Beast now reports, though, that the Kremlin’s pretending like everything is great. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declared (to RBK TV via the Beast) that “2022 is the year of unity in our society,” and although opinions run rampant on the war, he predicts “[t]he absolute consolidation of our society around President [Vladimir] Putin.” However, the citizenship of Russia’s largely opposed to Putin’s invasion, which has led to Russian citizens being arrested while protesting the brutal, civilian-killing conflict. Meanwhile, The Daily Beast reports that Russians are leaving the country while the getting is good, and the exodus is notable:
His comments seemed to be all the more jarring in light of a new report by Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service that warned of a massive “outflow” of Russians since the beginning of the year. In the first half of 2022, a total of 419,000 Russians left the country—more than double the exodus seen a year earlier in the same period, according to Rosstat data. The population size has thus shrunk to 145.1 million.
Six months have passed since Putin first waged war on Ukraine. The Russian president’s troops have been candid about being in the dark regarding their mission, and some of them even went into mutiny mode while threatening to blow away their commander as the war kicked off. And there’s also still no sign of Putin locking down the war as a whole with President Zelensky’s country coming together in real unity against “those Russian sh*ts,” although as time has worn forth, it’s becoming clearer that even Russian troops want nothing to do with this war.
(Via The Daily Beast)
Source: https://uproxx.com/viral/russians-flee-vladimir-putin-war-ukraine/
