Oksana, a 30-year-old from Siberia, moved to Moscow a year ago. She rents a room in a small, simple apartment in Zhukovka, on the outskirts of the city, close to the area where many in Russia’s political and business elite live, in large mansions screened from the road by high, forest-green fencing.
“You see them going past every day in their motorcades, and it just seems like a different world,” Oksana says. Often, she is delayed as she drives to her secretarial job, as the road is closed for government officials to speed past with police escorts. “I was never that interested in politics before, but seeing just how unfair it is, it does make you wonder if you should be doing something to change it.”
