A young Russian policewoman was fired for posting a reel on Instagram where she mocked her $400 (40,000 rub.) monthly salary, which is actually less than $100 per week. (Video in the comments below.)
28-year-old Olga Gaidukova worked as a district police officer in the town of Novocherkassk (Rostov region), population 160,000, which is in the South of Russia, near the Ukrainian border.
The satiric reel about her salary, which she published in her personal Instagram account, scored a lot of views and likes. It is this popularity that got her in trouble.
Reportedly, the young lady was called to her superiors, who demanded from her to delete the Instagram account — but she refused and was fired.
The defiant ex-police officer admitted that she didn’t think her bosses would go that far. There aren’t too many willing candidates for such jobs and police officers are overworked.
The cost of living keeps skyrocketing. Mortgage rates are at 17% in Russia, and the government just cancelled special rates for first home buyers (which were at 8%).
“Prices are cheaper than they will be tomorrow!” — Russians bitterly joke about the constantly rising prices.
The Russian central bank plans to raise the base rate, which is currently at 16%, so the mortgage rates could be going beyond the scary 17% per year already this month.
Putin keeps saying that Russians can purchase more goods with their low salaries than westerners can buy with their much higher wages, but I don’t think many westerners would want to live on the ration of cabbage soup with bread and tea with cookies. This is actually what pensioners in Russia eat every day, because most of their pension money they spend on utilities bills (aka “kommunalka”). After paying for their homes, they can only spend $1–3 per day on food. And no, it’s not enough to buy proper food.
Yes, Russian people working regular jobs live better than homeless people in America living in the streets. But they don’t live anywhere as comfortable as Americans who work in the same type of jobs.
That’s a fact.