Image by КПРФ ТВ
CPRF protesting against pension reform in Moscow (2018-07-28)
Russian trust in President Vladimir Putin has dropped to levels not seen since before the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Putin seems to have touched the third rail of Russian politics – pension reform. Even with the changes his pushed through to make the new law less onerous on the population, his popularity has still plummeted.
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Results published by Levada on Monday showed Putin’s personal trustworthiness levels dropping from 59 percent in November 2017 to 39 percent in September 2018. In June, when the government announced the pension reform plans, 48 percent of respondents said they trusted Putin.
“People believe that the state is trying to solve its problems at the expense of the population,” Levada director Lev Gudkov told the Vedomosti business daily. “It encroached on something that the people consider their own – pension savings,” wrote The Moscow Times.
“People think the government is trying to solve its problems at the public’s expense. It has made an attempt to take something people consider to be theirs: pension savings,” Levada Centre director Lev Gudkov told the Vedomosti business daily, reported AFP.
The Kremlin used offshore adventures in Syria and East Ukraine to keep the public’s mind off of domestic problems but the pendulum has apparently swung back as Russian are fearing economic forces at work in the Russian Federation which could hurt their livelihood.
