About 40 million people in Russia will soon lose their access to free healthcare.
Who wants to bet that these very people will support Putin more passionately than ever?
Today, Russia’s main TV channel showed an interview with a woman who claimed to be from the recently liberated Ukrainian city of Slovyansk (the woman later turned out to be severely mentally ill) and who shared a blood-curdling story of Ukrainian soldiers crucifying a small boy in the main square of the city in front of a huge crowd. No explanation as to why Ukrainian soldiers would engage in such an activity was offered. Journalists from Ukraine and Russia have been interviewing every inhabitant of Slovyansk they could encounter since the story aired but haven’t found anybody who saw anything of the kind.
The story is very useful, though. Who will worry about something as trivial as healthcare benefits when kindly Uncle Putin is protecting little kids from being eaten by mean Ukrainian soldiers?
Clarissa's Blog 
The movement away from universal healthcare (presuming that is what previously existed) and toward fevered nationalism is surely a step to the right.
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12 июля 2014
НОВОРОССИЙСКАЯ БИБЛИЯ
Сначала были космос, звезды,
бардак и Черная дыра.
Потом Господь Россию создал.
И Украину из ребра.
Потом уехал. Дома не был.
А Змей, поняв, что Бога нет,
стал предлагать России Apple
и безлимитный интернет.
http://lleo.me/dnevnik/2014/07/12_bible.html#.U8LgnQd-kuE.facebook
Btw, have you heard about Валерия Новодворская? Only after her death, I heard her name and now wonder whether to read her articles:
http://www.medved-magazine.ru/search/?author=15
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She was a very special person. Encyclopedically educated, brilliant, very provocative. This is an enormous loss for Russia. She had suffered horrible persecution and torture at the hands of the Soviet KGB workers, and it was an enormous tragedy for her to see a representative of that same organization in power in the “democratic” Russia.
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I read her book, and I saw her at a ‘Perestroika’ rally in Kharkov, Ukraine.
I also loved reading the ‘Free Word’ newspaper published by her ‘Democratic Union’, and I saw her on TV lecturing on Russian history.
She was a fantastic person. For me, she meant even more than academician Sakharov…
God bless her soul…
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“free healthcare”? As in, no one pays for it? It just appears out of nowhere? Incredible.
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“The Constitution of the Russian Federation provides all citizens right to free healthcare under Mandatory Medical Insurance in 1996.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Russia
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Андрей Орлов
Мы с тобою в России остались одни…
Ни кола, ни двора, ни друзей, ни родни.
Мы с тобою в России остались одни.
Гнутся крыши от веса сосулечных льдин.
Мы остались с тобою один на один.
http://butavka.livejournal.com/1540417.html
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And a talented poet. So many talented people in Russia, yet such a crappy existence. It’s the mystery nobody has been able to solve.
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