I also live in Russia, and in my experience certain VPNs just get blocked by the ISP. Like, I just can’t connect to certain VPNs, the connection either gets stuck in an infinine loop or fails with an error. But some other VPNs still work without any problems.
Plus, since the beginning of this month, it’s prohibited to promote/advertise “means to avoid blocked internet resources”, i.e. proxies/VPNs/etc, so it can be called “partially restricted”
Adding to all the reasons already listed, Russia isn’t striving. For example, right now there is a number of towns and cities experiencing outages in central heating (with houses designed around central heating so basically no other option to heat their appartments) while the weather dips to -20°C (around -4°F). All because the centralized boiler facilities weren’t properly maintained due to the lack of money (or, to be more precise, due to money being diverted towards the war).
There are other signs, like plains malfunctioning and flights getting delayed because some component broke and cannot be replaced due to sanctions, and they happen more and more often. Also the less noticeable stuff like prices of common goods increasing by a factor of two in the last couple of years while salaries barely increased at all.
So yeah, Russia is keeping itself afloat, but it isn’t thriving at all
If there’s nothing wrong with people losing jobs, then go on, resign from your job. Be the change you want to see in this world.
This is bi erasure and I won’t stand by it
Yep, near Saratov, around 700km south-east from Moscow.