Federal officials say a referendum on raising Russia's retirement age would be legal

Russia’s Central Election Commission says three groups’ proposals for national referendums on a plan to raise the country’s retirement age are perfectly legal. One of these initiatives comes from Ilya Sviridov (the Just Russia party’s mayoral candidate in Moscow), another is from the Communist Party’s branch in the Altai Territory, and the third is being promoted by the Moscow branch of the All-Russian Union of Public Organizations for Large Families.

A referendum on pension reform will be triggered as soon as one of these groups registers 43 regional divisions and then collects two million signatures in support of the initiative (with no more than 50,000 endorsements in a single region).

• According to sociological studies, roughly 89 percent of Russia’s population opposes the plan to raise the retirement age. The last time Russia held a national referendum was in 1993.