Uh, a median wage will always have 50 percent of people above and below it, because that's how a median is defined: as the middle of a number sequence.

I think you meant the average wage, which is ~$60,000 in the US and in Russia it's $15,000 (nominal) or $41,333 (PPP*). For reference, the average income for Poland is $21,000 (nominal) or $49,000 (PPP*). Two-thirds of Americans earn below $60,000. Russia's income inequality is similar to that in the US: both seem to have a Gini coefficient around 0.4. Therefore, we can assume that it's a similar distribution in Russia, aka two-thirds earning below $15,000 (nominal) or $41,333 (PPP*). (*2022 PPP values from OECD)

Taxation also affects things. An NYT article mentions this (April 27, 2024):

Most Russians pay income tax at a flat rate of 13 percent, significantly lower than what taxpayers in the United States and Western Europe typically pay. In an interview in March, Mr. Putin said he planned to introduce a new progressive tax scale in part to alleviate poverty, a popular message among many Russians who support increasing taxes on the country’s rich, which have historically been low. The article is about the government looking to raise the tax rate to 15 percent for people earning above $10,000 (nominal).

Using official statistics, consumer prices in Russia since February 2022 have risen by 20-21% in total. For the same time period it's 14% in the European Union and 10% in the United States. This is similar to their inflation rates for 2022+2023. If I add up month-on-month CPI increases for the period by hand, it's 56% for Russia, 18% for the EU, and 40% for the US. I don't know where that discrepancy comes from, did I do something wrong? I used Consumer Price Index data from Tradingeconomics.com

Finally there's incomes. Wage growth in the EU and US is on average similar to their inflation rates. But in Russia it's 36%, significantly higher than the inflation rate of 21%. Of course there's the matter of how that growth is distributed, but at a first glance it suggests that not as many Russians suffer from the higher prices as the high inflation rate would suggest, though this will vary by region.

Russia vetoed renewed sanctions 🤣

Yes. Americans will seize vessels heading toward Cuba, sanction companies that trade with them, forbid any vessel that enter a Cuban harbor to anchor at an american harbor for months on end, if ever. Not to mention all the behind the doors rat-fucking they do.

The Economic War Against Cuba by Salim Lamrani goes into all of this if anyone is interested.

It does, but vast majority of the world, including US allies like Canada, doesn't agree with it and trades with Cuba.

Any ship that docks in Cuba can't dock in the US for like 6 months I think, which screws them over trade wise cuz the nearest port is in Florida so it makes it pretty unprofitable for most commercial shipping companies to do business with them. Who wants to drop buy a small developing island nation port without also going to the wealthy developed nation port right next door?