Recently, I have found it very difficult to talk to people even about things as banal as grocery store prices.
One evening at a Pyaterochka supermarket in northeast Moscow, a middle-aged woman brushed off my question about the rising cost of living. “Everything is fine with our prices!”
Few people were willing to even respond to my requests to speak with them. So I had to turn to my own receipts to look at how hard inflation has hit Russia.