The War Devouring russians’ Wealth, While Official Statistics Pretends Everything Is Thriving

According to the latest reports from “rosstat”, the poverty rate in russia has supposedly halved in recent years – down to a meager 6.7%. However, this does not reflect a rise in wealth, but rather a massive statistical scam. For ordinary russians, they simply changed the formula for calculating their poverty, and “on paper” everyone instantly became wealthy.

The secret lies in a sleight of hand with the methodology. Previously, people were considered poor if their incomes fell short of the real subsistence minimum – the actual cost of food, goods, and basic services. Now, however, the authorities have tied the calculations to an artificial “poverty line” set back in 2020, which is only formally “adjusted” to match the fabricated inflation rate. If the statistics were calculated using the old, more honest system, the poverty rate would be at least 9.1%. The kremlin simply “crossed off” nearly 3.5 million people from the ranks of the destitute with a single stroke of the pen.

While moscow and st. petersburg show abnormally low poverty rates of 3–3.8% due to the concentration of financial flows and the headquarters of monopolies, russia’s provinces continue to teeter on the brink of survival. In national republics, poverty rates are 2–4 times higher than the national average: in ingushetia, it’s a staggering 24.3%; in tuva – 18.6%; and in karachay-cherkessia, buryatia, and chechnya – ranging from 13.8% to 15.3%. Millions of russians there have been left out of the formal economy and survive only thanks to informal earnings and their own vegetable gardens.

The reality on the ground in russia is entirely dictated by putin’s “war economy”. The enormous expenditures on the war against Ukraine have triggered rampant hidden inflation, which is eroding russians’ last remaining savings day by day. And the bloody “war money” – payments for contracts and deaths on the front lines, which the regime uses to plug holes in the budgets of impoverished regions – only further drives up prices for food and medicine.

So, all the talk about “richer russians” is just more propaganda noise designed to cover up the colossal price society is paying for the war of aggression. And to keep russians from asking too many questions about why their refrigerators are emptying out, the state statistics agency simply conjures up new, rosy figures.