"Fecal rivers" flowing through the Russian city of Korolev (often transliterated as Korolyov).
Some people see Russia on maps and assume that its power and wealth correspond to its enormous geographic size. But it's far poorer and weaker than it appears.
Russia's GDP is about the size of Italy's and its population is the size of about three Spains or less than two Germanies.
Russia's military is a major shambles. The "3-day special operation" in Ukraine is now into Day 1,264. The country has suffered over a million casualties so far.
Russia's diversion of money to its flailing war effort and imperial ambitions means less money for basic essentials.
A startling example of that occurred in the city of Korolev (Королёв in Russian). Korolev is a city of over 225,000 in Moscow oblast. It is about 25 km northeast of the Kremlin. But despite its proximity to the center of Russian power, its streets have been full of poop.
This is from the paper Московский Комсомолец with major help from Google Translate.
For five days, residents of Korolev, Moscow Oblast, have been suffocating from an unbearable stench after a major sewer rupture. Rivers of feces are flowing through the city streets. At first, municipal authorities tried to explain the problem as a tech failure at the sewer pumping station, but later they were forced to admit that the problem was far more serious. The city's sewer infrastructure, which had not been updated for more than 70 years, could not withstand the current load, which is growing every year due to increased housing construction.
It gets worse. A contractor damaged a water main and much of the city was also without clean running water for two days.
At the same time as the sewer break in Yubileiny, cold and hot water suddenly stopped flowing in other parts of the city, where more than 200,000 people live. At first, local authorities explained this new emergency by saying that utilities were trying to reduce the load on the sewer system in order to begin repairs. But the area hit by the water supply outage clearly exceeded the scale of the sewer rupture, and then another ugly truth was revealed. It turns out that during repair work on the main water supply, the contractor damaged a cast-iron pipe that had not been replaced for 70 years! While workers were fixing the water main failure, the city with a population of 226,000 people remained without water for two days.
Putin has been in power for a quarter of a century but the country is still run as incompetently as the USSR was run during the Brezhnev era. And in a post-Soviet twist, oligarchs are buying superyachts plus prime property in London with looted money made possible with Putin's blessing. So the filthy rich get even richer while the residents of Korolev just get more filthy with sewage.
Here is a picture of raw sewage oozing onto Korolev's streets.
Again, Korolev is not a remote backwater. In terms of distance, it is to downtown Moscow what suburban New Rochelle is to the financial district in downtown Manhattan.
The image of a strong and powerful Russia is largely a Potemkin village meant to hide failing infrastructure, rampant corruption, and a mafia-style government. In the United States, we need to avoid following in Russia's footsteps.
EDIT: Here's another example of Putin Russia's shabbiness – foreign kids are being recruited to make drones for Putin.
Study Abroad And Build Drones: How Foreign Children Are Serving Russia's Military Machine
Russia may be "large" in one sense, but it is also dilapidated.
