Sleight of Hand

The Russian MOD is performing some financial sleight of hand on military pay. Having announced indexation of military pay and pensions over several years beginning in early 2018, the MOD has now adjusted the schedule so that any rational Russian officer or NCO has to question the MOD’s real intentions.

The MOD increased pay and pensions by 4 percent on January 1, 2018 and promised similar raises in 2019 and 2020. Russian military personnel likely anticipated 4 percent on January 1, 2019.

However, on October 22, Deputy Defense Minister Tatyana Shevtsova told Krasnaya zvezda the MOD will now raise pay and pensions on October 1, 2019, October 1, 2020, and October 1, 2021 by 4.3, 3.8, and 4.0 percent respectively.

Survivor Shevtsova will reach 9 years in the MOD next May

So instead of 12 months, it becomes 22 months between raises. Then presumably they will become annual (and the military even gets a bonus year in 2021). But likely no one is holding his breath for that.

Ms. Shevtsova didn’t have as much joy for the MOD’s roughly 900,000 civilian workers. She said certain categories of civilians in military-scientific institutions are making 95,000 or 84,000-86,000 rubles per month. The pay schedule for the lowest-earning MOD civilians has been increased four times during the past three years, she said. But it must be so insignificant that she didn’t deign to illustrate with examples of how pay for those workers has been raised.

Northern Fleet civilians ask for respectable wages

Recall, until January 1, no indexation for inflation had been provided since the Russian military salary structure was revamped and increased in 2012. Cumulative inflation in the interval has amounted to 50 percent. While tame right now, annual inflation for 2018 is still running at 2.5 percent which eats some of this year’s pay increase.