KRASNOYARSK, October 5./TASS/. Regular Russian people report the same level of life satisfaction after the start of the special military operation despite the economic sanctions slapped on the country, inflation and the exodus of foreign brands, the director general of Russia’s leading polling agency, Valery Fedorov, told a media forum on Thursday.

"In December 2021, the life satisfaction index rose to 65; we can attribute this to the end of the strange and in many ways scary times of fighting the pandemic, this invisible enemy. But then almost without a lull comes the special military operation," the chief of the Russian Public Opinion Research Center said.

"It would seem that satisfaction should drop, and significantly drop, but we see that it has not. <...> This is a paradox, because life has really become more complicated - not only due to military actions, but also with a new slew of sanctions, <...> rising inflation, the departure of many brands from the country and so on," Fedorov said, specifying that for August 2023 the index also stood at 65 points.

In his opinion, the main reason was the change in the system of values for the population, and also because the living standards of the Russians have remained the same overall. "Maslow's classical pyramid (one of the theories of the hierarchy of needs - TASS) says that <...> what seemed important in peacetime fades to the background during war, and vice versa," Fedorov explained.

For example, such questions as "will there be bread and buckwheat on the shelves" are impossible in peacetime, he added. "In wartime, however, they emerge. And if trade continues, goods are available, work is available, and basically there is enough money, satisfaction does not decrease," the director general summed up.