Erefia’s senseless war against Ukraine is costing the Russians themselves, who are being condemned to poverty by Putin’s regime. As an already poor country in terms of per capita income, Russia spends money not on taking care of its own people, but on destroying other countries.
Except for Venezuela, where communists seized power, there are virtually no oil countries in the world that live in poverty while selling huge volumes of oil and gas. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait – all live very well, and only Russia looks like a beggar on a barrel of “black gold.” This is because the money is not spent on schools, hospitals, or a decent old age for citizens, but on absurd wars that consume the lion’s share of national income.
For example, during the first 5 months of the war, the Russian occupiers fired 821 missiles at Ukraine, which cost approximately $7.5 billion. On June 1, 2022 alone, Russia fired 7 Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 3 Iskander-K cruise missiles at the capital. One Iskander-M missile costs up to $2 million, and one Iskander-K missile costs up to a million dollars. That is, the attack cost 17 million.
During the 14 days of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the occupying army lost equipment worth about $6.5 billion. This money could be used to reconstruct and build hundreds of civilian facilities. In particular: 200 hospitals, or 203 schools or 100 kindergartens.
According to military analysts, the Kremlin spends an average of $1 billion a day on the war against Ukraine. Millions of Russian taxpayers’ money are being spent by Putin’s regime on unnecessary aggression, while millions of Russians live in terrible conditions. The theft of toilets by Russians in Ukraine is a clear indication of what the Putin regime has brought the population of one of the world’s richest oil countries to. Instead of making their country better, the Russian authorities decided to invade a foreign country.
Ever since the Soviet Union, the authorities have been abusing the people, forcing them to endure poverty in order to support communists in Vietnam, Cuba, or Angola, and to oppose America for no known reason. The current Russian regime also spends money primarily on death: a single Russian T-90 tank costs $4.5 million, while a kindergarten opened in May in the Belgorod region costs $2 million. While Russian women are unable to enroll their children in kindergarten due to a lack of childcare facilities, for one tank that kills Ukrainian children, the Russian government could build two kindergartens for their children’s future. But the Kremlin prefers to kill other people’s children rather than take care of its own.
The SU-35 fighter costs $83 million, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces shoots down dozens of such aircraft. At the same time, the most expensive school in Erefia, built by Gazprom, costs $76 million. For the money that Erefia spent on fighter jets destroying Ukrainian schools and universities, Russia could have built ten elite schools and still had money left over.
The 5 Iskander-M missiles destroyed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces could have turned into two modern hospitals in Moscow if Putin had not driven the poor Russians to storm the landing near Vovchansk. The most modern and technologically advanced stadium in St. Petersburg, the Gazprom Arena, costs $650 million, while the sunken cruiser Moskva, which shelled Zmeiny Island, costs $750 million.
One large missile attack of more than a hundred missiles on Ukrainian cities costs so many billions of dollars that one backward Russian region could be turned into Dubai if it were not for the criminal stupidity of the Russian authorities and the equally criminal patience and zealotry of Russians who are willing to live in poverty as long as their government destroys another country.
Author: Valeriy Maydanyuk
