Russian retirees scour dumpsters as prices skyrocket amid crisis
Recently, a recording from Moscow has been circulating online. It shows a group of retirees searching rubbish bins behind a market for expired food. A similar event was recorded in St Petersburg in mid-April, where a fight broke out among pensioners.
A recording from Moscow appeared online, showing a group of seniors gathered behind one of the markets. It was one of many such meetings involving sifting through rubbish in search of expired food. In this particular case, one of the targets was dairy products.
While many products have suggested consumption dates, consuming dairy products such as eggs or milk after the expiry date can severely impact health. Nevertheless, for many retirees in Russia, this is the only way to avoid starving.
The phenomenon of sifting through trash for food intensified after the outbreak of the Ukraine war. Since then, even though the number of benefits hasn't decreased, many products, including basic medicines, have significantly increased in price, pushing seniors into dire poverty, among other things.
Russian seniors, to survive, rummage through rubbish
The inefficiency of the Russian system right after the outbreak of the war is visible not only in the hinterlands but also in the centres of large cities, where the cost of living is significantly higher. It is precisely there that thousands of seniors struggle with poverty and hunger, which finds expression in searching for food in dumpsters behind markets.
The desperation of these people is immense, as shown by the April brawl by the dumpsters in St Petersburg. A group of seniors went at each other's throats for some expired food there. Currently, many of them do not hide that rummaging through dumpsters has become somewhat of a habit.
