Yep, near Saratov, around 700km south-east from Moscow.

Have you contacted ANY Russian anti-war group before making that comment? Vesna, Media Partizans, Voice of Reason movement, Freedom movement, Resistance movement, Rospartizan, BOAK, The Black Bridge, Freedom of Russia Legion, Feminists Against War, or any of the others?

Not 1000 protesters. 1000 DETAINED protesters. And during the same day the protests happened all over the country. I may have not been entirely clear in my comment, but you could’ve at least checked the Wikipedia.

Since the start of the war until 6 March [2022] nearly 13,000 have been detained.

And it’s nearly impossible to calculate how many actially participated and escaped before getting detained. And that was before the mobilization, that was when only the professional military was involved. After the mobilization the protests reignited.

And what exactly do you mean by “Russians aren’t passively resisting”?

What do you mean “Finally”? The protests in Russia started on 24th of February 2022. Over 1000 protesters were detained just in Moscow that day alone. And the protests continued after that.

The problem is, these protests achieved nothing, they only resulted in fines (which undoubtedly went to funding the war), protesters being beaten, detained and some even got a criminal charge. So the protests died down because continuing them only fueled the regime more. Some people shifted to solitary picketing, some started doing online activism, some started sabotaging the railways and burning down enlistment centers, some left the country altogether and some, undoubtedly, just gave up.

I meant that these things aren’t as noticeable from outside of the country. Like, foreign news outlets probably won’t report on it much. Plus, eggs are more of an exception because of sudden shortage and prices rising rapidly. For most of the other goods the price grows more gradually and isn’t as obvious. Like in that metaphor about slowly boiling a frog.

Another problem that is noticeable from inside the country (at least by those affected by it) is that certain medications are vanishing from the pharmacies because they are no longer imported and they were never produced locally, or the local production is insufficient to meet the needs. I don’t know the full list, but the stock of ADHD meds is definitely low, and I’ve heard from friends that they had to switch to a different antidepressant due to shortages.

Uhhh, yes. It was 3am when I wrote this, so my brain probably farted hard

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

To summarize:

There was a dude called Igor Girkin, he was in the Russian military. His crimes include, but aren’t limited to:

1. Shooting down Malaysia Airline MH17 in 2014
2. Torturing and executing Ukrainians
3. Terrorism in Eastern Ukraine under guise of separarism
4. Involvement in the annexation of Crimea (at least illegally crossing the border as a part of military force and threatening citizens)

is arrested in Russia for saying that the Russian army is performing poorly in Ukraine and Putin and Shoigu (minister of defence) are not managing the situation appropriately.

It shows that in Russia, showing honesty about war is more of a crime than murder and terrorism. Combined