Putin tries to buy peace with 50% pay rise for the police

Times
From Jeremy Page in Moscow



THE Russian Government is to give the country’s entire police force a 50 per cent pay rise in an attempt to prevent its officers from joining a wave of protests against a new law scrapping Soviet-era welfare benefits.

The announcement by the Interior Ministry yesterday came two days after President Putin ordered the Government to raise military salaries by 20 per cent in another move to contain the most serious civil unrest of his five years in office.

The protests were sparked by a new law replacing benefits such as free public transport for pensioners, military personnel and police with cash payments that critics say are far too low. Several hundred pensioners joined a rally yesterday St Petersburg in the latest example of the unrest that has been gripping the country for the past three weeks.

On Tuesday, more than 5,000 people attended a rally in the centre of the western city of Nizhny Novgorod, shutting down traffic temporarily as the biggest protests of Mr Putin’s five years in office continued.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1458328,00.html

were granting. Especially when you include their extended families. And even moreso when you include their friends.

:)