Modern in the sense that there is wide access to the Internet and the ability to produce footage by most people. It is not Afghanistan where you can twist the narrative via media with little reports from the ground.
Do you live there? I know people from there, in fact, I have several in one TG chat - if you speak Russian, I can add you and you can persuade them how great their QoL is. For some people it may have improved, for others, it declined but there is certainly has been no significant improvement for most people and quite visible declines - power and water outages, a lot of stuff is banned (even Russian Sber does not operate there), etc., the region was largely propped up by the federal government. In before "Ukraine cut them off from power and water" - yes, sorry, but Russia should have prepared for such contingencies, you cannot expect to take land from another country and rely on their supplies.