Retire to Russia

Pensions for new citizens from Donbass could cost Russia 100 billion rubles annually, journalists have calculated. At the same time, the self-proclaimed republics refused to raise the retirement age. The pension fund stated that only those residents of the DPR and LPR who move to Russia will be able to receive Russian payments.

The experts who named the round sum assumed that Russian pensions would be issued to all people of retirement age living in the LPR and DPR, and the amount of payments would be no less than the minimum pension established in the Russian Federation at the federal level.
According to RBC estimates , about 1 million people of retirement age live in the republics. The minimum pension amount established at the federal level in Russia is 8,846 rubles, the average pension is about 14 thousand rubles.

Judging by official estimates of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs as of December 2018, there were more than a million people from the DPR and LPR in Russia. They have different statuses: work patents, residence permits, temporary residence permits, temporary asylum, said the head of the migration department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Valentina Kazakova.

The head of the Russian Ministry of Labor and Social Security, Maxim Topilin, in turn, told TASS that the payment of pensions to residents of Donbass who have received Russian citizenship will not be a “big burden” on the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation. Topilin did not give a more detailed answer.

Let us remind you that since 2014, branches of the Treasury and the National Bank of Ukraine have not been operating in the territories, payments of social benefits, public sector salaries and pensions have not been made. The media have repeatedly reported that these expenses were covered by Russia, but the Russian authorities have not officially confirmed this.

The leadership of the Pension Fund will be guided by the agreement on guarantees of the rights of CIS citizens of 1992. According to it, the countries that signed the document pay pensions to citizens of the countries participating in the agreement living on their territory.

“Russian pensions are not assigned to citizens permanently residing in Ukraine, including in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. When these citizens move for permanent residence in Russia, their pension provision will be carried out in accordance with the general procedure according to the norms of the legislation of our country,” the Interfax agency quotes the Pension Fund’s statement. The budget of the Russian Pension Fund for 2019 is 8.6 trillion rubles.

Earlier, Vladimir Putin simplified obtaining Russian citizenship for residents of Donbass. The decree signed by the president states that the period for consideration of applications from residents of the self-proclaimed republics is no longer than three months. The US State Department considered the incident a provocation, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin called it interference in internal affairs, and the Russian leader himself called it a humanitarian issue.