You should have seen what Ryssians say about Europe

Before or after they emigrate to Europe? Or are they coming to Switzerland out of spite?

Majority is not emigrating and believe what state media says.

Ukraine is and was literally the poorest european country. Even before this war.

So why do the Russian invaders keep steeling the toilets and washing machines?

When you measure wealth, it makes a huge difference how exactly you calculate it. Having a few astronomically rich oligarchs in your country increases the arithmetic mean, but does nothing about the median.

This is how Russia can have better numbers in national statistics, and yet the average Russian soldier can feel the other way round in Ukraine.

Your making stuff up.

[del: Most Russian soldiers are paid over $100,000 a year to volunteer to fight in Ukraine. :del] In contrast, most of the Ukrainian soldiers are conscripts.

Here's a Youtube channel by a Brit who moved to Russia in 2002 or 2003:

https://www.youtube.com/@SamsRussianAdventures/videos

At the current time, the top video (i.e., the latest video) in that list is titled, "I'm Much Happier Here in Russia - Here's How Much it Costs".

Sadly, I haven't been able to find out (after watching about 5 of his videos) how much he earns and how he gets his money.

Russia's Gini coefficient is 35.1 whereas the US is at 41.3. Zero means perfect equality whereas 100 is the most unequal society possible.

Most Russian soldiers are from the poorest areas of Russia. Most of the poor schlubs getting fed into the meat grinder are never going to get their payday.

If the Russian volunteer gets killed, his family gets paid.

Provided that things like paperwork are in order, which often they are not, on purpose. For example, there are so many examples of Russian command refusing to collect the bodies of dead soldiers. No body, no death certificate, no payout.

That article was written 14 months ago. Since then, the amount the Kremlin is willing to offer volunteers to sign a contract has gone up substantially.

However, my research is telling me that I was wrong when I wrote, "Most Russian soldiers are paid over $100,000 a year to volunteer to fight in Ukraine". Even the ones who signed contracts recently probably get less than half of that.

And what do you think this says about the average Russian?

Remember that wealth distribution in Russia is extremely skewed and many people don't even have access to luxury such as an indoor toilet (roughly 1/4th of the population).

So? The issue is, are they living better than (most) Russians - the Russians who see them as "one people"? That's the issue in lawn's post.

As a context because I see people downvoting it - that slogan was on a semi-famous picture of how the invaders left one of the houses. It was painted on there.