RUSSIANS EARNING SLAVE WAGES

Yeah...How's that Putin and a return to communism working out for ya?

At the current dollar-ruble exchange rate of 23.5:1, the sum of 7,000 Russian rubles amounts to $297.87.

That's the average monthly wage of a petrochemical worker in Russia's Sverdlovsk region, just west of the Urals on the border of Siberia. The major metropolis of Yekaterinburg is located there.

For four 40-hour work weeks, that translates into a shocking average hourly wage of only $1.86. So much for the notion of economic recovery in Vladimir Putin's Russia. These are the real wages earned by the vast majority of real Russians across the country, offset by a tiny clan of super rich who exploit the unwashed masses as has always been the case in Russia.

So, despite the absurd propaganda being churned out by the Kremlin, Russia is rather far from being a resurgent dynamo on its way to paradise. To the contrary, Russians are starving themselves in the vain hope of clemency from the malignant trolls who prowl the Kremlin's parapets, begging for legal and economic justice and laying their lives on the line to do it. Meanwhile, as has always been the case in Russia, a tiny clan of oligarchs hoards the nation's wealth for their own obscene and secret purposes.

Yeah...But they put on one helluva military parade.