Putin gives himself, Medvedev and heads of security a salary raise
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday to increase the salaries of senior government officials.
According to the decree published on the official legal information website, as of October 1, the salaries of the president, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and key security department chiefs will be indexed to 4.3%, the official inflation rate.
Raises will be received by Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov, and National Guard Chief Viktor Zolotov. Raises are also planned for Vladimir Puchkov, Minister of Emergency Situations; Dmitry Konchev, head of the Federal Protective Service, and Sergey Naryshkin, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service.
Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and Investigative Committee Chief Alexander Bastrykin will also cost the federal budget more.
This is the second raise for senior officials this year. In January, a temporary 10% reduction in their pay, implemented by Putin as a response to the 2015 crisis, expired.
As a result, the salaries of the president, prime minister and security chiefs will grow by nearly 15%, twice as fast as the average growth of nominal salaries in the country (7.4% according to the Federal Statistics Service in August).
According to the Ministry of Finance, the federal budget will spend a total of 1.64 trillion rubles (around $25.3 billion) on government organs and officials over the course of the year, equivalent to one ninth of the budget.
5.54 trillion rubles ($85.5 billion) will be spent on defense, in other words 28% of the budget. Thus financing for the army, lawmakers and security chiefs accounts for 38% of the entire federal budget.
The indexation of Putin and Medvedev’s salaries is routine, Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti.
The president signed the decree on his 67th birthday, which he reportedly planned to spend with his close friends and family.
The weekend before his birthday, Putin flew to the taiga, where he gathered berries, mushrooms and cones, and had a photo shoot with Sergey Shoygu against a mountain backdrop.
RBC reported that President Putin brought back a cone which he supposedly found on top of a mushroom.