Against the background of the termination of support measures that were introduced last year against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, the problem of poverty in Russia may worsen. Olga Samarina, director of the Department of the Accounts Chamber, warned about this, she is quoted by TASS.
Samarina recalled that since 2021, support measures, especially in relation to unemployed citizens, will be stopped. “The measures that were taken, a huge complex, a wide range of measures aimed at supporting those whose financial situation could potentially deteriorate and deteriorate, this set of measures did not even allow us to stabilize the level of poverty,” she stated. Samarina also added that over the nine months of last year, the number of citizens with incomes below the subsistence level increased to 19.6 million.
At the end of January 2021, Rosstat announced a reduction in the number of poor Russians. According to the department, in the third quarter of 2020, 18.8 million people, or 12.8 percent of the country’s population, had incomes below the subsistence level (11.6 thousand rubles).
At the end of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the inadmissibility of a situation when people do not have enough money for food. In March of the same year, Putin noted that since the turn of the century, the share of Russians who can be classified as middle class has exceeded 70 percent. According to him, the poverty level in Russia has more than halved over the same period.