Russia has horrible levels of income inequality. A lot of the oil and gas money flows into the hands of the oligarchs and is thus concentrated either abroad, or in a few elite places like Sochi. Of course, the largest cities such as Sankt Peterburg and Moscow do reasonably well, too.

But a random village in Siberia has unpaved roads, wooden shacks and outhouses. Fully comparable to poor parts of India or Africa. This is where many of the soldiers come from, and where time has stopped, because the Russian state does not give a f*ck about living standards of rural people.

We had the same experience with them in 1945 and 1968 in former Czechoslovakia. And when they withdrew their forces in 1991, they bargained guns and grenades for stuff like toilets as well.

Obviously that is perfectly reasonable and no doubt happens. However the original comment was about "soldiers stole their toilet seats to take home because they could not imagine the magic of flush toilets." That I do not believe.

1) Flush toilet systems are uncommon in poor parts of rural Russia, where a good chunk of their contract soldiers are from. Having proper plumbing for your private house (not an apartment, where the infrastructure is done by the state) is very expensive. That is why soldiers were genuinely surprised to see them in Ukrainian villages. Also, note that Russian propaganda always portrays Ukraine as extremely poor. 2) Expensive ceramic toilet is as good target for marauding as any.

There were reports from Belarus that one guy sent some 440 kilos of “presents” to his family in Russia.

It was absolute propaganda.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/u192o3/babushkas_f...

Ok, interesting take.

Cool how it only took you one post to completely reverse your position from “oh no one would believe that obvious garbage” to “oh it’s okay people believe that”.

Good luck with all that goal post moving.