With pledges to boost military and police salaries and student stipends, President Vladimir Putin is trying to sweeten the pill of his social reforms which have sparked the first popular unrest he has faced since coming to power in 2000. This extra spending, for which financing is yet to be determined, will cut into Russia's budget surplus, the fruit of a hitherto rigorous financial policy.
The embattled reforms, that would see Soviet-era social benefits for the retired and other disadvantaged groups replaced by cash compensation, "is the first truly unpopular law of the Putin era," noted Yaroslav Lisovolik, analyst in the UFG investment company.
And the unforseen expenses "cannot be seen as anything other than Putin's attempt to defuse the protests and re-establish his popularity," Lisovolik added.
Russia's pensioners have rallied by the thousands almost daily for two weeks all over the country, denouncing as "criminal" Putin's social policy - and have won a promise of a pension raise and a return to nearly free transport rides starting January 17.
However, protest rallies continued into this week, most notably with some 5,000 people braving minus 12 degrees Celsius temperatures to rally Tuesday in Nizhny Novgorod.
On Monday, Putin called on his finance minister to boost the military's salaries by 20 percent instead of the planned 10 percent rise, and to increase student stipend.
The army had also frowned on the reform, with over 80 percent of Russian officers angry at having been stripped of the right to free transport, the defence ministry said in a recent research.
The Russian leader also urged the increase of monthly student grants by an average of 200 rubles (seven dollars) this year.
And Russian authorities meanwhile said Wednesday that regular police and interior ministry forces would receive a 50-percent pay increase to offset loss of free social benefits.
Even before the announcement of the police pay hike, UFG estimated that the measures would reduce the budget surplus from 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 1.2 percent.
The Stabilisation Fund reserve built up from oil revenues, which now amounts to 18.6 billion dollars, is likely to be tapped to fund the spending pledges, which could speed up inflation.
Discontent has spilled over into the political arena too. Five deputies of the nationalist Fatherland party, are continuing their hunger strike launched late last week, calling for the reform's annulment and the government's dismissal.
Sergei Glazyev, one of the party's lawmakers, explained the reform's problematic progress by the fact that it had not been debated in parliament which according to him had turned into a chamber merely rubber-stamping government bills.
The Pro-Putin majority party, United Russia, "blocks all initiative from outside deputies," the lawmaker said in comments aired on the Moscow Echo radio.
By concentrating all power in his hands, "Putin had come dangerously close to the moment when the people will hold him responsible for all that happens," political analyst Yulia Latynina warned.
Nor are the president's promises "truly going back on the reform, because its main features have not been modified," she stressed.
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