There's a similar phenomena with how Russians view Ukraine.
"Who allowed them to live so well?".
"Who allowed them to live so well?".
When you measure wealth, it makes a huge difference how exactly you calculate it. Having a few astronomically rich oligarchs in your country increases the arithmetic mean, but does nothing about the median.
This is how Russia can have better numbers in national statistics, and yet the average Russian soldier can feel the other way round in Ukraine.
[del: Most Russian soldiers are paid over $100,000 a year to volunteer to fight in Ukraine. :del] In contrast, most of the Ukrainian soldiers are conscripts.
Here's a Youtube channel by a Brit who moved to Russia in 2002 or 2003:
https://www.youtube.com/@SamsRussianAdventures/videos
At the current time, the top video (i.e., the latest video) in that list is titled, "I'm Much Happier Here in Russia - Here's How Much it Costs".
Sadly, I haven't been able to find out (after watching about 5 of his videos) how much he earns and how he gets his money.
Russia's Gini coefficient is 35.1 whereas the US is at 41.3. Zero means perfect equality whereas 100 is the most unequal society possible.
Remember that wealth distribution in Russia is extremely skewed and many people don't even have access to luxury such as an indoor toilet (roughly 1/4th of the population).