A pension worth 80% of the functionary’s salary if he has ten years of experience. Is indexed when the salary is raised.
The benefits of the deputies:
A service apartment in Moscow during the deputy functions (in practice former deputies retain their apartments).
Service in a specialized polyclinic, service in a sanatorium.
A pension after one term of service in the State Duma (four years) worth 75% of the deputy salary.
Free airplane transportation to the district, free international and inter-municipal telephone conversations.
The end.
“YOU SEEM TO THINK YOU’RE A TSAR…”
Being the president of a country where the minimal monthly salary is below a thousand rubles president Putin lives in unprecedented luxury. According to the press, Vladimir Putin lives in the Moscow region, in the Barvikha-3 residence, on Rublevskoe Road. The official maintenance of the presidential group is 899 915 800 rubles, if we are to believe the budget. The presidential security consists of 700 people; 50 people are on duty daily.
In the Kremlin the president occupies the building of the former Senate – 567 offices of several thousand sq. meters in total. Putin has three offices for himself: a work office, a representative office (a hall to receive visitors) and a reserve office, where the information from the Situation Center of the president is concentrated. The offices are equipped with seven special communication lines. In Moscow there is another presidential residence – ABC, but we do not know anything about it.
The president has also the following residences for himself: Gorki-9 (the biggest one, Yeltsin lives on pension there, it is 15 km west of Moscow); Rus – 150 km north of Moscow in the Tver region and Barvikha, 7 km west of Moscow.
Putin also uses the residencies in Novoogarevo (west of Moscow); the residence Valday (Novgorod region); Volzhski Utes (Samara region); Tantal (Saratovo region); Angarskie Khutora (Irkutsk region); Sosni (Krasnoyarsk region); in Sochi he has the residence Bocharov Ruchey (Krasnodar region); in Karelia – Shuyskaya Chupa (25 km from Petrozavodsk); in Saint Petersburg he has a “sea residence” in the Constantinople Palace in Strelna. In total, except for the Kremlin, mister Putin has 13 residences or estates, as you like. This is truly a tsar’s life!
Putin’s special plane IL-96-300 – his flying residence built in 1997. Later another “Plane Number One” was made – IL-96-300 PU (M), considerably perfected. Besides Putin uses a few helicopters and a special train. For sea travels he has the Russia sea motor ship, also known as “the president’s flagman ship” (length 83,6 meters, width 12,7, can contain 40 passengers). In the Baltic Sea he has a “service yacht”, a 27,4 long, 6,5 wide boat that can contain twenty people, it is called the Storm Petrel. The Moscow shipbuilding factory built for Putin Pallada, a 32 meters-long motorized yacht with two engines. On the Black Sea Putin has a yacht – the governmental ship Caucasus, 45-meters-long. And finally, as if all that wasn’t enough (the British papers solved the mystery in spring 2005), first in the port of Tuapse and then in the port of Sochi, Olympia, a new de luxe yacht guarded by the Federal Security Service, has appeared.
Not let us clarify all this. Let us begin with Plane Number One – the old and new. IL-96-300 was built by Voronezh’s plane-building association. Its salon has two stories. There are two bedrooms, one shower, a hall for meetings, a room for rest and even a reanimation office. The plane was painted in Holland and the salon was trimmed up in Switzerland. The interior was estimated at $35-40 million. The total value of IL-96-300 reaches $300 million.
In 2001 a second plane, IL-96-300 PU (M), was built for Putin on the same factory. According to the site News.ru.com on 02.10.03 the plane was being completed then: “The trimming of the second presidential machine was richer than the first. Every day wagons with wood arrive to the factory. In the first plane there is only one bar, in the new one there are three. The room for rest is also larger and is ornate with two beds for the presidential couple. The sanitary engineering for president Putin has cost a pretty penny, for instance the bathroom pan cost almost 75 thousand dollars. All the interior wooden trimming was produced nationally.”
Now the yachts. The president’s official site in the section “the president’s sea transport” mentions only the motor ship Russia built in 1973 and attached to Moscow’s port. But it is not the place we should look in.
The construction of the Storm Petrel cost three million dollars to the Russian taxpayers. It was built specially for Putin on the 300th anniversary of Saint Petersburg. The president’s site does not mention it because this presidential ship lies in Leningrad’s naval base.
The 45 meters-long yacht Caucasus was built in 1980 on Brezhnev’s order. In 2002 its was modernized on the Almaz shipyard (one of the shipbuilding bases of Saint Petersburg). According to Tom Parfitt, journalist of the Scotsman, the renovations cost 1,5 million pounds (sterling), i.e. $2 835 000. “After the reconstruction, Novaya Gazeta writes, the Caucasus was added new Japanese air conditioners, a home theater, ceilings coated with French mirrors, white leather sofas and armchairs, furniture from rare tree species, wall paneling from redwood and suede. The decks were made from tick.” It was not the President’s Administration that ordered the reconstruction like it is supposed to, but the federal Border Service. And this is a manner of the new rich – to register their cars and real estate on the names of their relatives in order to hide their property in case of a prosecution. Putin is a classical new rich. He began as a manager at Sobchak’s.
In 2003, a year after the Caucasus modernization the president acquired two new toys: the Storm Petrel, built, as we already know, specially for Putin on Saint Petersburg’s 300th anniversary and Pallada, also built for this occasion – Saint Petersburg’s 300th anniversary. The new project was built in Holland and assembled in Moscow, on Moscow’s shipbuilding factory. “The Dutch partner of the shipbuilding company, Guido de Groot, cautiously said that the highly ranked owner of the Pallada, being a native of Saint Petersburg, ordered that the yacht be finished for the celebration of the 300th anniversary of his home city,” Novaya Gazeta informs. The general director of Moscow’s shipbuilding factory Dmitry Mironenkov mentioned that ships like The Pallada cost about 4 million dollars. The maintenance of such yachts usually cost at least 10% of the yacht’s cost. Per year.
Pallada’s design is based on the theme of Peter the Great. There are wall-sized paintings of him. In the reception-room he is depicted building the city on the Neva River; in the boss’s room, over his bedhead, young Peter is writing something; in the bathroom there is a painting of Amsterdam, as Peter saw it. Like The Caucasus, Pallada has decks made of ticking and furniture made of rare tree species. The sofas and armchairs are made of white leather. All this is in comfortable rooms, salons and halls of a total surface of 390 sq. meters, on three decks, one of which is hidden from view. The salons and reception-rooms of the two superior decks are also protected from curious eyes. The huge windows are covered in a special darkening dust. The yacht is equipped with a stage and home theaters. On the prow of the ship the guests can sit on a soft semi-circular sofa with a disk-shaped table. Putin’s adviser Vladimir Shevchenko acknowledged the fact that the Pallada was built on the order of the president’s administration and said, “This ship is designed for official protocol events”. However he preferred not to mention how much did the Pallada cost to the Russian citizens. Actually it cost from 4 to 7 million dollars.