Pensioner Galina Emilianova, 65, gathers firewood near her home in the village of Moshenskoye.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
Putin’s Health-Care Cuts Spark Protests in Russian Heartland
The country has 100 billionaires, and yet more than a third of Russians can’t afford to buy two pairs of shoes a year.
Passengers on the sleek German-made trains racing through the Russian countryside between Moscow and St. Petersburg at 229 kilometers (137 miles) an hour can taste the high life. On the dining car’s menu is a half-bottle of French Champagne and a scoop of black caviar for 10,600 rubles ($163).
They probably don’t take much notice of Okulovka, just over halfway into the four-hour journey. It’s a town in Novgorod, a region where more than a third of people don’t have running water—and glaring economic disparities are hardly new in Russia. But pockets of disquiet rarely seen in the Vladimir Putin era are now putting Okulovka and similarly depressed towns in the Russian hinterland on the political radar.