The first part of the article I can relate to, but how it tied to the conclusion and this: “the average Russian spends about 50% of their income on food.” — is utter nonsense.
Here is on the napkin calculation of grocery basket to salary from retail and service sources[0] for central region:
I am from somewhat medium class but not poor background and I know very few people who earn that much, is that advertised as average monthly salary? Maybe they need to check the median? (The first link wouldn't load for me.)
Edit: fwiw friend about to receive a degree in economy says 62000 is basically a bullshit number for a single person, and if they are talking families well 5600 is also (it may be enough for one person to survive without eating out but not a family). Does not compute.
You can browse https://stats.hh.ru by yourself, sure salary differs by region and occupation, but it is even much higher for educated or just hard-working people, especially in tech. How is it bullshit, exactly ? (Only way I can think if you compare really low wage gov clerk with high tech worker and then average (50000 + 250000) / 2 = 150000 but it is not the case)
You chose the worst place to get your numbers. Try browsing avito and see if any of the 10000 rub/month flats in city center are available. The numbers are there only to attract you.
But for the record none of the .ru links you gave work for me currently. Does hh even host a representative amount of jobs for cleaning staff, shop salesperson, cooks and other jobs many regular people have? How many people don't have the chance to work for good clean money and get by with gigs or grey salaries? Consider that, double monthly food expense and it may be not 50 percent but not too far. It may be hard to grasp if you happen to be in a muscovite software engineer bubble.
How is publicly traded job marketplace company (hh.ru) is the worst place to source salary numbers ? Here is another superjob.ru, yeah Avito you mentioned[0],
Somehow, you argue without even bothering to access websites in question. Are you trolling ?
Not sure if you got my point that numbers on these platforms are a scam, it's pretty well known that they are unrealistic and posted to attract attention (aside from select few like Yandex maybe). You keep picking bad biased sources, and you have yet to clarify how to feed a family on 5600 per month
Here is on the napkin calculation of grocery basket to salary from retail and service sources[0] for central region:
5600 ₽ * 100 / 62000 ₽ => 9,0323 %
[0] MOEX:FIVE https://www.x5.ru/ru/PublishingImages/Pages/Media/News/Index...
[1] MOEX:HHR https://stats.hh.ru/central_federal_district
And here is the 2022 state of supermarkets in Russia:
[2] Typical near apartment supermarket, only of this retail chain there is, 18300 of these in country https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTy04V1bTDs
[3] Hypermarket https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kG9yfCwG_s