Russia's week: no food, cheap alchohol and 'bling-bling' watches

http://www.dw.com/en/russias-week-no-food-cheap-alchohol-and-bling-bling-watches/a-18633741

As the price of staples rises in Russia, the government has started destroying tons of imported food which critics say should be given to those in need. Fiona Clark in Moscow looks on in dismay.

Russia's week: no food, cheap alchohol and 'bling-bling' watches
Fiona Clark
09.08.2015

Earlier this week Russia started destroying the 552 tons of illegally imported food products smuggled into the country in the first six months of this year. These are meat, dairy and fresh produce from the EU, US Australia and Norway that Russia has declared illegal imports in retaliation to sanctions placed on it over the situation in Ukraine and Crimea. In order to destroy the products it's buying mobile crematoriums at a cost of 100,000 rubles each so that it can burn the food - that's about $1,600 depending on how bad the ruble is each time you open a currency converter. ($1 buys around 62 roubles these days - a year ago it bought 30.)

The decision comes at a time when the price of staple foods like buckwheat 'kasha,' usually eaten for breakfast, has gone up another 15 percent this month. The brand I'd usually buy has gone up from 60 rubles for 200g about a year ago to 239 rubles a packet now. That's a big jump. Salaries, however, haven't gone up by a similar amount and people are feeling the pinch.

Meanwhile, figures from the government's official statistics center, Rosstat, show the number of deaths in 2014 rose from 961,000 to 988,000, and according to the health minister, Veronika Skvortsova, old age is not the reason. She told the news agency Interfax, that "the mortality rate is rising among young people - aged from 30 to 45. … The horror of the situation is that in 70 percent of the cases, autopsies have found alcohol in the dead patients' blood."

When there's no light at the end of the tunnel and your faced with a choice of 239 rubles for a packet of kasha and 120 for 500 mls of vodka, it's not hard to see the connection.