Widows in Russia Recycling Cardboard to Keep Soldiers Fed and Warm
Keeping them busy helps today but a reckoning will come when this is all over
It is indeed sad. I am in no way mocking this woman, a mother of two and recently widowed. You may have read about her here. Alone, probably afraid, she now spends her days driving around the northern half of St. Petersburg collecting cardboard for recycling.
The army has said that it needs cardboard. I am not sure for what. Maybe they want to make little houses out of the boxy material for the soldiers.
Maybe they want to use it to create layers of insulation for soldiers sleeping on the ground — just putting that cardboard under your feet when standing outside in the winter amazingly adds warmth. I recall watching the experienced women at the Englishtown Auction (a massive Central Jersey flea market) in New Jersey standing warmly, selling their wares. My buddy and I were too cool at first to stand on cardboard and then our feet froze — we learned the lesson quickly and cardboard became our friend.
Nastia, the woman whose car is seen in the image above, is thrilled to be a part of this great crusade. I purposely leave her comments off because she includes too much personal information and pictures of her little boys lugging the cardboard. “Papa would be proud of them,” she wrote.
It makes me wonder when “papa” was down there in those trenches and the world around him was on fire and his ears were ringing with days of non-stop explosions, was he proud of his choice to be there? When he was shivering uncontrollably, was “papa” thinking, “Gee, I was I had a big, IKEA box right now?”
I doubt it. Before his life ended less than two months after he was mobilized and after he and his wife wasted one of the last weekends of his life running around St. Petersburg stores buying supplies like body armor and night vision goggles (things that modern armies supply for their troops), he might have had an epiphany he never managed to share with his overly-patriotic wife: What happened to all the money?
Where did it go?
Since 2000, when Putin became president, he confidently announced that the days of corruption were over. Putin promised that the mafia would be broken and the wild west ruled by the oligarchs brought to its knees. Putin kept his word but didn’t finish his sentence, “And, I will replace them with the bureaucracy and my friends.”
Since 2000, hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested in Russia’s military, and in 2022/3, Russia is using four-decade-old tanks, trucks with rotting tires, and rifles from World War II to take over a country that is 10 percent larger than France. When the Nazis during World War II invaded France, over one million troops were sent across the border. Russia sent in 100,000 to take the whole of Ukraine with pretty much wheelbarrows and tractors.
Where did the money go? I can tell you that there are a lot of empty villas all over Europe right now. Massive, multi-million dollar homes with high fences and cameras, long, winding driveways, and private beaches stand wondering what happened to our loud, conspicuous owners. From Menton to Monaco to Cote d’Azur, French is again the lingua franca.
The machine of corruption that Putin created ran more smoothly than anything else in Europe and everyone had a hand in it. Everyone, from local governments to real estate agents to shop owners to car and boat dealers to hotel owners is suffering because of the war in Ukraine.
When Nastya collects cardboard to send to the troops to keep them “cozy warm and their bellies full,” as she wrote in her post, someone in Europe is parking their car in a newly-renovated, heated two-car garage thanks to the diverted Russian defense money.
The diverted funds are everywhere. Million-dollar apartments in the new “pencil buildings” of Manhattan, and at so many other elite addresses, stand unoccupied by their owners and are reminders of Russia’s corruption.
Although, to be honest, we should thank God that Russia is so corrupt. Had that money been invested in the military then Russia’s army would be one of the best supplied in the world. Not that that would have changed the outcome, because Russia’s officers are arguably the most cowardly and least professional in the world. The ethos of “lead by example” and “follow me,” does not apply in Russia’s military.
It still just boggles the mind, though, that Russians are so proud of this “great military even though they are collecting garbage to send it off to the front to help the troops there — tampons are helpful because they can be used for plugging up bullet wounds, as one Russian sergeant informed the newly-mobilized troops.
As this woman informed the troops, the army gives you a uniform and a gun — kind of — and you supply everything else.
“Bunny, I need your tampons to go kill Ukrainians.”
And somewhere in an alpine village, a chalet with diamond-studded floors and hand-carved woodwork stands empty.
Nastya doesn’t permit comments on her posts as it seems she is avoiding questions or comments that could upset the fragile balance she has created. She is a mother of two and so she needs to do what she needs to do.
She uploaded a photo of a gift she received after dropping off the cardboard. Some old guy approached her and thanked her efforts for “saving Russia from the fascist invaders” — he said “invaders,” amazing, right?
This little “Z” pin was made by the man who gave it to Nastya.
“Give that to your boy,” he said.
Nastya commented that because it was hand-made and from a patriot, all of the sorrow of the past year was suddenly worth it.
“Had I not been here to get this amazing gift, I would never have met this man, this patriot. It calms my heart to know that our Russia is so loved, so strong, and so eternal. My boys will have a beautiful future.”
Lunacy like Nastya’s is why Putin is fully in charge and even loved by this lost and sad nation of people.
A regular, middle-class family, the type that most countries would work to protect