With ordinary Russians grumbling about the sharp rise in food prices, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a populist move on Friday, announcing that he and almost everyone who works for him would take a 10 percent pay cut.
The reduction, which takes effect May 1, extends to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his entire Cabinet, as well as the nation’s prosecutor general and most Kremlin officials, the state media service said.
Russia is facing severe economic and financial problems stemming from a steep drop in world prices for oil — the nation’s main export. Its situation has been made worse by Western sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine and the slumping value of the ruble.
Inflation accelerated to a 16.7 percent annual rate last month, the highest level since March 2002, the government said earlier this week.
Prices for staple foods and vegetables like carrots and cabbages rose more than 22 percent in January alone, and sugar now costs 68 percent more than it did a year ago.
In addition, Moscow has banned imports of a wide variety of meat, dairy and other products from Western nations, in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
The nation also faces acute credit problems. Russian companies that can no longer borrow from Western banks because of sanctions are lining up for handouts from the government to help pay off about US$100 billion in debts.
Against that backdrop, pay cuts at the top are meant to be seen as a gesture toward sharing the pain. The Russian parliament’s upper house agreed earlier this week to accept a 10 percent cut in members’ salaries if the rest of the government did the same, and the lower house, the Duma, is expected to follow suit.
Whether Putin and his colleagues would actually feel the cut is another matter.
The president said at a news conference in December last year that he was not really aware of how much he was paid, and that he just forwards his pay envelope to the bank.
Official Web sites put his salary at 3.7 million rubles in 2013, the latest year for which data is available. At the time, that would have been equivalent to about US$90,000, but the ruble’s decline since then makes it now worth just US$62,000. Figures for last year are due next month.
Many Kremlin watchers doubt that he lives on that salary alone.
There have long been widespread suspicions that Putin has acquired and stashed away a fortune over his 15 years at the head of one of the world’s major oil exporters, not to mention a nation where many people have used official positions and connections to obtain spectacular wealth.
Some reports have suggested that Putin might now be worth more than US$40 billion, although there has been little, if any, hard evidence to go by.
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