Staunton, July 12 – Putin points to an increase in the average incomes of Russians without acknowledging that the overall rise has been achieved only by a radical increase in the inequality between the incomes of the wealthiest Russians and those at the other end of the income scale, the Vyorstka news portal says.
Those in the bottom 10 percent earn on average 10,761 rubles (110 US dollars) a month, while those at the top bring in an average of 152,351 rubles (1600 US dollars); and this enormous disparity is not just between Moscow and the regions but within the vast majority of regions and republics (verstka.media/rossiya-teper-strana-s-vysokimi-dohodami).
That means that the sense of injustice that many Russians feel about such inequalities is not just between a wealthy Moscow and poor “provinces” but within the regions and republics as well where people experience it more immediately, one of the reasons that the KPRF and other systemic opposition parties are gaining traction.
The Kremlin routinely claims that it is fighting income inequality, but it is doing so in a way that not only is not reducing this socio-economic problem but is at the present time, when Moscow has cut its subsidies to the federal subjects to finance its war in Ukraine, in fact is intensifying it within the latter as well.
The only way that income inequality could really be reduced, the economists with whom Vyorstka spoke say is for Moscow to promote broad economic development that will lift all groups rather than help only a limited number of people, however successful the Kremlin may still be in spinning the numbers.
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