Russia’s Food Stamps: A Moral Surrender

Military Glory Can’t Feed Pensioners

Image Source: Think Global Health

Food stamps in Russia in 2025. The term ‘food stamps’ alone feels like a ghost from another age, a spectre wandering the aisles of a modern supermarket, clutching a ration card instead of a smartphone. If you grew up in Russia, or anywhere in the post-Soviet world, the image would be one loaded with dread, like hearing the air-raid siren test at noon, or seeing the bread lines snake around the block in the dead of winter. It means something fundamental has broken.

And yet, here we are. The Russian government is preparing to roll out food stamps for the first time since 1991. The end of the Soviet Union was supposed to be the end of that world. But history, it seems, is not so easily banished.

Following on from my several recent articles looking at bellwether indicators (links below, ICYMI) about the Russian economy, society, and military, we look now at food stamps. It might not sound very exciting, but it is a vital indicator. And it is my challenge to make them interesting for you.

Remember, as I always say, you don’t predict wars or collapses from just a few indicators. Nor from simply exciting indicators like tanks off the production line.

It is the collapse of the mundane, the deeper and…