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.
[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:
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.
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.
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.