Putin Decides the Kremlin Must Suffer, Too

摘要

As he gears up for a parliamentary vote a year from now, Vladimir Putin has a chance to show the electorate that even his own entourage is feeling the pain of recession. As part of spending curbs on the bureaucracy, Russia's president has agreed to cuts in the Kremlin's budget by as much as 10 percent, people with knowledge of the plan said. The moves were decided before a public uproar over an expensive watch that Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, flashed at his July wedding. The first deputy chief of staff of the presidential executive office, Vyacheslav Volodin, has also faced criticism for his property holdings. This popular displeasure reveals an underlying irritation with the lifestyles of cosseted officials. A bureaucrat's half-million-dollar watch is "an important signal at the beginning of an election campaign," says Nikolay Petrov, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.