No hope in Russia. What a shit hole! Think of cats as well.

This photograph from Russia posted to Twitter/X by @nafoviking (he's a great critic of Russia) made me and a lot of other people think about what life is like in Russia. I know that in part of Russia, probably large parts of Russia, life is somewhat like this or exactly like this. As he says it looks and is utterly depressing. And very cold a lot of the time as well.

Click on the image to see it larger if you want to. This is particularly useful when reading this post on a smart phone.

Russian apartment block. The picture is believed to be in the public domain.

I would expect things to got a lot worse since Putin invaded Ukraine because he has now upped spending on armaments and the military to around 30% of Russia's GDP. NATO insists that member countries spend 2% of the GDP on the military and a lot of European countries don't achieve that.

You can see how much money Russia is putting into the war in Ukraine which means a lot of money is taken away from public services in Russia which in turn almost certainly means that they are seeing more apartment blocks like this, not maintained properly and falling to bits.

And, of course, being an animal lover and cat lover, I must think about the domestic cat companions if there are any living in this block with their owners. You have to use a little bit of imagination but not much to visualise a cat living with perhaps an elderly couple in a one-bedroom flat on the fifth floor with their long-suffering domestic cat companion.

A cat that has probably lived all their life or most of their life in this one bedroom flat; possibly or probably eating crappy Russian pet food which possibly or probably is affecting their health negatively. 

I don't want to paint an unfair picture. Although I hate what Russia is doing like millions of others and I hate the indoctrination of the Russian people by Putin and his cronies in the Kremlin into believing that he is a wonderful leader and all is well, I need to try and be even-handed and fair.

An interesting aspect of Russia is that they do like their cats although I don't think cats like to live in Russia as it is far too cold. Of course it isn't cold all the time but it is for large parts of the year.

And there are some amazing cat breeders in Russia. I don't like cat breeding but you have to admire cat breeders who do a good job. And Russia has their own couple of purebred cats namely the Russian Blue and the Siberian.

Russia breeds some of the best Maine Coon cats. But it seems to me that a large part of their population live in what we would regard as extreme poverty in the West. Their entire life is lived in this form poverty. They don't regard it as poverty but the boffins in the UK would because in the UK we have a distorted sense of what poverty is.

We don't know we are born in the UK. We are so mollycoddled and given so much money by the government which the government can't afford.

When the electricity and gas bills went up immediately after the Covid-19, this UK government dished out a lot of grants to help pay the very high heating bills. During that period, I am sure that I made a profit because the government gave me more money than I was spending on heating. They were that generous. Overly generous, spending money that the UK does not have.

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.