Rash Russia

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 you're 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.

Let them eat cake

But at the other end of the spectrum some elements of the Moscow elite are clearly not worried about the cost of vodka or kasha. In what can only be described as an ostentatious display of wealth, President Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has copped a beating by what's left of the independent media this week for wearing a watch that is allegedly worth around $620,000 to his third wedding, a lavish event in a Sochi hotel charging $500 per room per night.

The civil servant earns around $147,000 a year, leading the press to ask how he could afford such a fine time piece. First he said his wife gave it to him - she's a former Olympic figure skater who tried to set up a skating school in the US with her former husband before returning to Moscow to marry the press secretary. He said she could afford it because she'd had some TV endorsements in Russia. Then his friend said he had borrowed the watch - a Richard Mille, one of only 30 in the world with a distinctive gold skull on the face, - for the wedding and had deliberately worn it to see what the press reaction would be. But opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who noticed the watch in the wedding photos, called him out a second time by finding a photo of him wearing the same piece in April this year. How could a civil servant afford a watch worth four times his salary, he asked, and was quickly followed by a chorus of others asking for an explanation.

Such a flagrant display of wealth, at a time of hardship and when food that could be given to low-income earners is being destroyed, has left a bad taste in the Russian population's mouth. Even the world's best spin doctor would have trouble talking his way out of this one, especially when patience is wearing thin.

Fiona Clark is an Australian journalist currently living in Russia. She started her career with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a TV news reporter in the mid-1980’s. She has spent the past 10 years working on publications such as The Lancet and Australian Doctor and consumer health websites. This is her second stint in Moscow, having worked there from 1990-92. What was to be a two-year posting is still continuing.