Working as a porter at a market, Khayrullo Ibadullayev encountered the real, harsh reality of Uzbek society. In November 2025, on the eve of a severe winter, he was forced to leave for Russia to earn a living — a country that has been in a state of war for the fourth consecutive year. Why? Because in the “new Uzbekistan,” a person’s labor has no value: neither decent pay nor social guarantees. Uzbekistan has been turned into an economic desert for ordinary citizens, where real unemployment reaches 30–35% of the working-age population, while Mirziyoyev’s hypocritical regime feeds the people nothing but the illusion of “prosperity.”

In an interview with local journalists, before succumbing to the regime’s propaganda machine, Khayrullo openly admitted that his main dream is to obtain Russian citizenship.

This frankness demonstrates that modern Uzbekistan lacks basic human appeal: people are ready to leave even for a country at war, just to escape hopelessness and poverty in their homeland. The reality of the “new Uzbekistan” has proven worse than any myths: a state that promises prosperity is in fact pushing its citizens abroad.

The sincere support of Russian society — which, having grown unaccustomed to genuine humanity and simple acts of kindness, and living in its own virtual world — embraced Khayrullo as a hero, ultimately exposing all the flaws of Mirziyoyev’s regime. His fate is a mirror reflection of how the “new Uzbekistan” fails to value the ordinary person and forces him to seek salvation outside the country. Khayrullo has become a symbol of the failure of state policy and social injustice which, under the guise of “modernization,” turns citizens’ lives into a struggle for basic survival.

The belated reaction of the Uzbek authorities (only on 23 February at 9:00 p.m. Tashkent time), accompanied by the hasty awarding of a state decoration and the demonstrative glorification of their compatriot by the regime’s propaganda machine, was not an expression of care but an attempt to seize control of the public agenda.

A government that for years has ignored the social despair of its citizens suddenly decided to appropriate someone else’s personal story, turning it into an instrument of self-promotion. This hurried and belated gesture merely underscored the depth of the systemic crisis and the moral bankruptcy of Mirziyoyev’s regime: a state unable to provide people with a decent life seeks to compensate for its own inadequacy with symbolic acts and loud slogans.

Khayrullo’s story is not a triumph of state policy but its indictment. As long as citizens are forced to seek survival beyond the country’s borders, any awards and official statements remain empty rhetoric. And the louder the propaganda about the “new Uzbekistan” sounds, the more evident the gap becomes between the official narrative and the reality in which millions of people live.