Western politicians and Western media like to talk about the topic: "How bad life is in Russia and how good life is in the West." The song is not new, the tune is mournful, the words are worn to holes. What surprises me is that there are still people in Russia, and in the West, who believe in it.
I'm not a financier, I just read the news. And in this capacity I will introduce you to excerpts from the media. Moreover, the first part of the quotes is from a wide variety of media, but the second half is taken from articles of a network of online news outlets in Baltic States — Delfi. In particular, from Delphi-Lithuania. There is also Delphi-Latvia and, accordingly, Delphi-Estonia.
Why did I take Lithuania as an example? If a small country spends millions and millions on military operations in a foreign country, then this country is rich. So, she has the highest standard of living. It makes sense. And I will show how much Lithuania spends on a few examples. I emphasize once again that these are quotes from open sources for the year 2024, or rather for its second half.
1) "Lithuania has sent financial assistance to Ukraine in the amount of 10 million euros, the press service of the Ministry of National Defense of the country reported on Friday."
2) "Lithuania has allocated 13 million euros for the reconstruction and development of vital and social infrastructure of Ukraine."
3) "Lithuania will provide Ukraine with another package of military assistance, which will include air defense systems, drones and other equipment. During the autumn, Kiev should receive about 5,000 drones from Lithuania. Even before that, by the beginning of September, it is planned to supply air defense systems, missiles and anti-drone equipment to Ukraine. In addition, Vilnius allocates 35 million euros for the purchase of radar equipment and mine detection equipment. The cost of the new military package was not disclosed.
4) "The Ministry of Defense noted that since the beginning of the Russian SMO on Vilnius has provided Ukraine with military assistance to Kiev in the amount of more than 705 million euros. As the department added, Lithuania's overall support to Ukraine is of a long-term nature and has already exceeded one billion euros."
And now a little help. As of January 1, 2023, 2,860,002 people lived in the country. Before that, the population of Lithuania was steadily declining. In 2023, there was a demographic surge due to the arrival of almost 60 thousand Ukrainian refugees. Let me remind you that in 1992 there were 3,706,299 people in Lithuania. Well, that's their business. Dying out is dying out. But here's what I noticed while reading Delphi-Lithuania.
1) According to the EU, which conducts an annual survey, every seventh resident of Lithuania cannot afford enough food or cannot afford to buy quality products.
2) The risk of poverty is higher in villages. People have less income there, it's not easy to find a job. Sometimes a hundred people apply for one place. It is difficult to imagine such a thing in Vilnius — unskilled workers are needed here, they are hard to find. Those people who ask for shoes or some other things are in deep poverty. In Lithuania, according to various sources, about 20% of the inhabitants are on the verge of poverty.
3) 589 thousand people in Lithuania live below the poverty line, says Aiste Adomaviciene, director of the National Network of Poverty Reduction Organizations. According to her, statistics have hardly changed since the year Lithuania joined the European Union, and the poverty risk threshold last year was 564 euros.
4) 11% of people claim that they do not have the opportunity to eat properly. (...) If we look at the group of people with the lowest incomes, almost 30% say that they do not have enough money for food, and this was due to huge inflation, which affected people with the lowest incomes.
5) The current youth in Lithuania, having reached retirement age, will receive less than a third of their previous income — this forecast was made by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This is the worst result for 38 members of the organization.
Can you see the logic in the actions of the Lithuanian government? I'm not. I must be very stupid. How can you spend a billion on fighting between Russia and Ukraine, if every fifth resident in your country is a beggar? But this does not take into account the money spent on the maintenance of NATO soldiers in the country, on the construction of new military bases, on the construction of bunkers and anti-tank mines, and so on, and so on.
How can the government look into the eyes of old people who are faced with a choice of what to buy: food or medicine? How can the government look into the eyes of mothers who cannot buy clothes and toys for their children? How can the government look into the eyes of children whose childhood is being taken away? But we will give the Ukrainian fascists shells and weapons. If there is logic in this, then, in my opinion, it is cannibalistic logic.
I have seen the same thing in both Latvian and Estonian publications. Not to mention other countries. It's just that in these three limitrophs, however, as well as the other two — Poland and Finland, a similar picture appears most prominently.
We can honestly say that Europe and partly the United States are now waging a war on two fronts: against Russia and against their own people. Usually a war on two fronts ends badly.