I keep in constant contact with friends from Russia. It strikes me that there are two themes in their (independent) narratives.
First, they are writing about the fact that the resettlement of entire families and a wide circle of relatives has arisen and is becoming more frequent - from settlements near the war zones inland. People decide literally from today to today and leave without telling their neighbors and friends. They load their cars with huge luggage and just leave.
Their hearts are healed, their souls are aching. They are afraid that they will not break through the cordons of soldiers and policemen with machine guns and masks on their faces. They fear that their homes will be ransacked as soon as it becomes clear that they have left them.
Housing prices in settlements close to Ukraine are falling, and dexterous and enterprising "businessmen" are ready to buy them for half or even a third of the real cost. At the same time, in cities in the interior of Russia, where migrants come, housing prices are skyrocketing - doubling and tripling.
Where human flows originate, there is already an acute shortage of labor. Schools and universities, hospitals and homes for the handicapped and/or elderly cannot function normally. Laboratories and factories, all kinds of enterprises and even city administrations are suffocating from a shortage of personnel.
At the same time, where these streams of people arrive, there is a surplus of newcomers looking for work.
True, these processes are just beginning, but the main thing in them is not the number of de facto internal refugees in Russia, but the tendency for a rapid increase in those fleeing inland. In the near future, this will give rise not only to various disproportions and asymmetries, but also to all kinds of other negative phenomena - an increase in crime, apartment robberies, prostitution, and social discontent.
The Kremlin villain and his inner circle clearly did not foresee all these destructive events.
Secondly, there is a rapidly emerging network structure, very similar to the mafia, which:
on the one hand, helps for the exemption from military service of those who, even after the (supposedly) end of mobilization, are daily drafted into the army,
and on the other hand, helps those men, subject to conscription for participation in the war, who seek to leave the country.
The prices for these services are rising very fast. Gradually, a whole black economy is taking shape, if you can call it "business". According to some estimates, in order to leave their country today, a Russian of draft age must pay at least one and a half, or even 2, 3, or even 4 times (depending on the border that he wants to cross, as well as on the likelihood of being drafted), than the Ukrainians once paid, who hid from the draft and crossed the border of Ukraine mainly with Poland and Hungary.
Young Russians are practically voting with their feet against the war of the Kremlin villain in Ukraine, and their vote is gaining momentum, and the network structure in question is growing rapidly and practically covers the entire country, gradually turning into a state within a state, into a parallel state acting according to its own laws.
29.10.2022
Brief explanation:
These texts have been translated into English by me. They have not been read and edited by a native English speaker, nor by a professional translator. Therefore, all errors and ambiguities caused by the quality of the translation are solely mine. But I have been guided by the thought that the purpose of these texts is to show my opinion on a number of hot topics, and not to demonstrate excellent English, which, unfortunately, I cannot boast of.
