Occupying Russians had never seen a modern toilet

[Crunchy Frog]

Babushkas from a liberated village near Kyiv tell about russian soldiers who've seen a modern toilet for the first time in their lives

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/u192o3/babushkas_from_a_liberated_village_near_kyiv_tell/

[LakeArenal]

1. Do not give the Republicans any new ideas.

No toilets for you.

[world wide wally]

2. Does that mean that Russians don't flush 15 or 20 times?

[Frustratedlady]

3. Trump would be out of luck when it came to destroying his secret notes/papers.

I suppose he could throw them down the 2-holer and hope future poopers covered the papers up before anyone saw them. Of course, who, in their right mind would fish the papers out once in?

[Wingus Dingus]

4. I watched one lady interviewed by news media

who said the troops looting her village houses were impressed that everyone has Nutella in their kitchens. Most of the conscripts are coming from the poorest parts of Russia, obviously--the middle class and wealthy avoid conscription for their sons.

[Crunchy Frog]

5. More: Russians steal ancient marble toilet from looted museum.

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=zqRbhL7XrfvK-manR8izTQ

[mitch96]

6. "seen a modern toilet for the first time " I guess anything is better than two footprints and a hole

[EX500rider]

7. Yeah that's what they had in the airport in Qarshi Uzbekistan.

Was not pleasant, they had a old lady selling squares of TP in there also.

[mitch96]

16. My father who was a world traveler, had many funny stories about toilets in different country's..

Just recently a friend who went to Cuba ran into your TP lady there... I don't know if its still the case..
m

[LisaL]

8. That doesn't sound believable at all.

NT

[Crunchy Frog]

9. It's completely believable. You think those ladies are just making it up?

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=3JUU9KM0p8Zl4fLZNrVCyw

[BlackSkimmer]

10. And because this is on Twitter, that makes it true?

Russians are familiar with toilets, for crying out loud.

[Crunchy Frog]

12. Obviously not all of them.

The conscripts are mostly too poor to bribe their way out of conscription, and many come from isolated and impoverished regions, mostly in the far east.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. I was skeptical until I googled it

One in four Russians don't have indoor plumbing.

[tavernier]

21. I've been to Russia.

I’ve sat on a box with a hole over the top in a “grand”department store in downtown St. Petersburg. Old women tore off squares of toilet paper from a roll and presented them to patrons who entered to use the facility.We were told by the Russians that this street was comparable to 5th. Avenue in NYC. My girlfriend and I had a hard time keeping our laughter inside until we left. There were also plenty of public toilets outside of the city where outdoor toilets were holes dug in the dirt with some kind of white powder sprinkled around. Although our hotel did have modern toilets.

[former9thward]

13. Its BS

Russians have toilets.

Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe.

With a per capita GNI of $3,540, Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe as of 2020. Ukraine once had the second-largest economy in the USSR. However, when the USSR collapsed, Ukraine had difficulty transitioning into a market economy, which sent much of the population into poverty. Some of Ukraine's continuing issues contributing to its poverty are government corruption, Russian aggression (specifically Russia's illegal seizure of Crimea in 2014), and weak infrastructure.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poorest-countries-in-europe

By comparison Russian per capita is $11787.

https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-per-capita#:~:text=GDP%20per%20capita%20in%20Russia%20is%20expected%20to%20reach%2011000.00,according%20to%20our%20econometric%20models.

[Crunchy Frog]

14. Some Russians have toilets. Bye.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

18. I was a skeptic until I googled it.

[smirkymonkey]

22. Winters must be a bitch!

I think I would rather just not eat or drink anything than have to make a trip to the outhouse in below zero weather in the middle of the night! And in the 21st century!

[marked50]

11. I am not an expert in this, but in the Islam world "western Toilets" are not common.

In the Islam world the place to taking care of defecation is quite often nothing more than a hole in the ground. Water is used for "clean-up" but not as any kind of flush. There are customs associated with this.

It is not surprising to hear of someone's surprise to be exposed to something they may not be very familiar with.

Just saying-

[dalton99a]

15. Indoor Plumbing Still a Pipe Dream for 20% of Russian Households

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-still-a-pipe-dream-for-20-of-russian-households-reports-say-a65049

Indoor Plumbing Still a Pipe Dream for 20% of Russian Households, Reports Say
April 2, 2019

More than one-fifth of Russian households do not have access to indoor plumbing, according to official statistics obtained by the RBC news website on Tuesday.

Russia leads the developed world with the worst sanitation record, according to the London-based WaterAid NGO. A 2012 estimate citing official data placed the number of Russians whose households are only equipped with outhouses at 35 million, or roughly a quarter of the population.

Of the 22.6 percent of households without a centralized sewage system, 16.8 percent use a system of pipes connected to pit toilets, RBC cited the State Statistics Service, Rosstat, as saying. The other 5.8 percent lack a sewage system altogether.

In rural Russia, almost two-thirds have no access to indoor toilets, 48.1 percent of whom use outhouses and 18.4 percent do not have a sewage system.

[SmallFry]

19. Interesting point.

Most Americans would find public bathrooms in the Ukraine to be very strange. They use squatting toilets.

This is from their tourism website.

UKRAINIAN RESTROOMS

Oddly enough, this is probably foreigners' biggest gripe about Ukraine. Bathrooms in public places — including public restrooms, trains, beaches, resorts, and even many hotels — are rarely close to Western standards. Foreigners go to stunningly beautiful opera houses and theaters only to find squat toilets in the public restrooms, or regular sitting-style toilets — but with the doors falling off their hinges. Toilet paper is often absent, as are toilet seats. Ukrainians often use regular sitting toilets as squat toilets, putting their feet up on the toilet bowl. Hard to believe? Yes, it's true. They find it unsanitary to put one's bottom on a surface where others have been, unless the toilet seat is cleaned regularly, as in McDonald's (where the cleanest bathrooms typically are to be found).

Yes, Ukraine's bathroom culture is pretty low. Especially outside of the big cities, restrooms typically lack 1) toilet seats, 2) toilet paper, 3) soap, 4) hot water, and 5) towels or blow driers. In other words, a typical public restroom has urinals, holes in the ground, and a sink with cold water. Foreigners (as well as many Ukrainians) find it irritating that you have to pay to use public restrooms, and the lady at the entrance gives you only a few squares of toilet paper if you ask for it (!). Evidently, toilet paper is such an important commodity that they must go to great pains to make sure it is not wasted. If a foot of toilet paper happens to not be enough, that's your problem.

Showers in many older-style hotels and apartments do not have shower curtains, which means you get a lot of water on the floor. In addition, there are no soap and shampoo holders, so you have to stoop over to pick them up off the floor. Hot and cold water availability is also an issue in many cities, and water pressure is often low. In a word, what is considered normal for western bathrooms is a luxury in Ukraine.

Try Ukraine

If true and the Russians are seeing toilets for the first time, it tells me two things. Who the Russians are sending to war and that Russian society must be extremely segregated by wealth.

Over half the worlds population lives without functioning indoor plumbing.

[smirkymonkey]

23. The first time I encountered those hole in the ground public restrooms was at the train station in

Belgrade when I was a college student travelling from Hungary to Greece. I was kind of horrified. No TP either, but luckily I had some napkins with me in my bag.

Not nearly as horrified as my friend, who accidentally dropped her Walkman down the hole! (this was the 80s). She was crying to all of us, but we were like, "sorry, we feel terrible, but nobody is going in to fish that out for you."

There was also no food to be found anywhere in the station (we were just on a stop) and luckily we had a compartment (couchette) inside the train because you could not move outside of it. The aisles were just piled with bodies of travelers and there was literally no place to walk without stepping on people. We were happy to finally arrive in Greece after a very long trip and a few days of very little food.