According to international and russian media reports, Russia’s bourgeois government wants to raise the retirement age for both men and women and to increase value-added tax, unpopular measures it hopes will ease pressure on state finances, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.
As Reuters has reported, Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have long talked about raising the retirement age but have shied away from doing so, in part because such measures risk stirring up popular discontent and damaging politicians’ popularity.