President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, let us begin with an issue we discussed last time. As you know, a draft law on the additional one-time payment of 5,000 rubles to each pensioner early next year has been submitted to the State Duma. Initially, we said that this law will include all groups of pensioners, but it turned out that the draft law does not cover military pensioners and comparable groups. I understand the logic of the law’s authors. An average military pension is 24,000 rubles, while civilian pensioners receive 13,000 rubles on average.
However, we said the additional payment will be made to all groups of pensioners. We value our reputation, and people know that we try to be as good as our word.
We discussed this issue with the Prime Minister, and we know that the necessary resources are available in the budget for making these payments. Therefore, I am asking the Government to make the necessary amendments to this draft so that it will cover all groups of pensioners, including military retirees and comparable groups of pensioners.
As you know, over the past few years we have been doing our best to index military pensions in accordance with our previous decisions.
I believe that we can do this quickly, so that military pensioners also receive this additional one-time payment at the beginning of next year.