Protests across Russia at Putin plans to raise state retirement age

Opponents of a Russian government plan to increase the age for state retirement pensions held protests throughout the country yesterday and more than 150 people were reported arrested.

The protests were called by Alexei Navalny, the anticorruption activist who is president Vladimir Putin’s most prominent foe.

Mr Navalny is serving a 30-day jail sentence connected with an unsanctioned protest in January unrelated to the pension proposal, which was tabled in June.

Opposition to the proposal spans the political spectrum.

Protests organised by the Communist Party were held across Russia earlier this month.

The plan calls for the pension age to be raised by five years, to 65 for men and 60 for women.

Olga Sokolova, 52, a 52 factory worker, said she was “dumbfounded” by the proposal because she had hoped to retire from her physically taxing job at 55.

“I can’t keep being afraid anymore,” she said of her decision to risk detention by joining a protest in Moscow’s Pushkin Square that police said attracted about 2,000 people.

They chanted “Russia without Putin” and held signs including “Putin, when will you go on your pension?”

The demonstrators later began marching in the direction of the Kremlin, about three-quarters of a mile away, chanting, “Down with the tsar!” as they passed the building of the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament. Demonstrations also took place in Yuzhno-sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island and in Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania.

Photographs on social media indicated most of the protests were attended by 100 or more, with some apparently drawing several hundred. In St Petersburg the crowd appeared to exceed 1,000. At least 30 people were detained at that protest.

The OVD-INFO organisation that monitors political repression reported 153 people had been detained in connection with protests around the country. A lawyer for Mr Navalny’s Anti-corruption Fund was arrested in Moscow before the rally there.

Raising the pension age is opposed both by older Russians, who fear they won’t live long enough to collect significant benefits, and by younger ones worried that making people work longer will limit their own employment opportunities.

Igor Panov, 24, said at the Moscow demonstration: “The reform is a robbery of my parents and grandparents. We’re stealing our future, too. Right now the only thing we can do is protest.”

Mr Putin’s trust rating in public opinion polls dropped after the proposal was tabled.