“F**k this war!”: Resentments start to fester in Russia
he other day my boss asked me if I knew anywhere good to go on holiday in Turkey or “Asia”. I was taken aback, partly because he’d never asked my advice on anything like this before – there isn’t much overlap between the lifestyle choices of an English teacher and a Russian commodities trader.
My boss took his family to Dubai at Easter, about a month after the war started, but it’s too hot in the summer. He seems determined to find somewhere more appealing. He spends a lot of time on the phone with a friend who rents out private jets. Recently I discussed these stories with my friend Vladislava. “Fuck this war!” she said. “They will not take my Tema.” Vladislava’s parents had never been keen on her boyfriend Tema, and we used to joke that she’d have to force them to love him by getting pregnant. She’ll need to get on with it now, she remarked dryly – before Putin gets him killed.
Meanwhile, sanctions are starting to bite. Restaurant menus have shrunk and people are grumbling about being paid late. At the private school where I teach, students in the cafeteria queue now play a guessing game about how many days out of date the yogurt pots are going to be.