Boris Vishnevsly’s blog post, 26.09.2018

The State Duma passed Putin’s amendments to Putin’s initiative on raising the regiment age.
The federal TV channels will no go out of their way to prise the President’s kindness.
In reality this “kindness” is worth nothing.
The retirement age for women will be raised from the current age of 55 to 60, not 63 as originally planned.

Member of Yabloko’s Political Committee Sergei Mitrokhin protesting agsint the pension reform by the State Duma on 26 September/ photo by Anton Novoderezhkin, TASS

As a result, the pension age will raise by five years for both men and women.
Each citizen will lose almost one million roubles based on the assumption that the average pension is 14.000-15.000 roubles per month.
What do we get in return? Almost nothing. They promised to raise pensions by 1000 roubles per month. It is about 7 per cent of the current pension.
The authorities need to save up to engage in wars in Syria and Ukraine.
To maintain law enforcement to break up opposition rallies whose attendants will retire at the age of 65 in contrast to law enforcement.
To support “president’s friends” who were affected by the sanctions.
Keeping tax and residential rental payment benefits for preretirement age people is by no means a compensation: this way the authorities simply agree not to take away what they could have taken away in addition to raising the retirement age. Discussions over raising unemployment benefits seem ridiculous: it shows that the authorities themselves hardly believe that introducing criminal responsibility for firing preretirement age employees will be effective.
All this is taking place when 75 per cent of citizens disapprove of the pension reform against 11 per cent who approve of it.
When we gained “additional” 3.5 trillion roubles from selling oil and gas in 2019: this is more than the budget will save as a result of the pension reform.
What is going on is a public and impudent robbery.
We know the names of all robbers.