The Real Russia. Today. The human costs of Russian pension reform, Bolton meets Putin, and Russian universities’ adversities

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

This day in history. On June 27, 1931, three years after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen, Igor Sikorsky filed a patent request for a “direct lift aircraft” — the first non-amphibious helicopter.

• Scholars estimate the human costs of Russia’s planned pension reforms
• John Bolton meets Vladimir Putin in Moscow
• Novokuznetsk publishes one heck of a 400th anniversary video
• Russian pharmacies beat back a legislative proposal that would have weakened their grasp on some OTC drugs
• Russia’s Defense Ministry might start hiring contract soldiers to serve in its “research companies”
• Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology fires a math professor after he told journalists about the school’s restructuring controversy
• The rector of the Saratov State Technical University is out, following embezzlement allegations by the FSB
• Police say 7.5 billion rubles were stolen from what will be Russia’s biggest shipyard
• The husband who cut off two of his own fingers to protest police inaction over his wife’s rape case has suffered a heart attack and died
• Dozhd is getting sued for a report claiming that a state official failed to declare her home
• A Russian aerial and marine explorer wants Putin’s help to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench

The human costs of Russia’s pension reforms 📉

Using the Human Mortality Database and Rosstat’s predicted mortality rates, the Higher School of Economics has weighed the human costs of Russia’s planned pension reforms, predicting that 17.4 percent of men and 6.5 percent of women won’t live to collect retirement payments, once the government raises Russia’s retirement ages.

On June 14, on Day One of the FIFA World Cup, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced massive changes coming to Russia’s pension system: the retirement age will start rising gradually next year, growing from 55 to 63 for women and from 60 to 65 for men.

Among Russian men born in 1959, who can retire at 61, the likelihood that they’ll live to collect their pensions is 95.8 percent. The likelihood that men born in 1963, who can’t retire until 65, will live to collect their pensions is just 82.6 percent. The chances of women born in 1964 reaching their retirement age of 56 is 98.9 percent. Women who can’t retire until the age of 63, however, are only expected to survive long enough to collect their pensions 93.5 percent of the time.

Russia’s two largest labor unions have announced protests against the planned pension reforms, and the anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny is calling on his supporters to stage demonstrations in more than a dozen cities on July 1.

Bolton meets Putin 🤝

Donald Trump’s mustachioed national security adviser, John Bolton, was in Moscow on Wednesday for a meeting with Vladimir Putin, who stressed that Russia has never sought a confrontation with Washington and suggested steps to restore bilateral relations. Putin said Bolton’s visit “offers hope” that U.S.-Russian relations might recover sometime soon. “I hope we can talk today about what we can do on both sides to restore full-fledged relations on the basis of equality and respect,” the Russian president said.

In a galaxy far, far away 🎂

The city of Novokuznetsk is turning 400, and what better way to celebrate that occasion than a music video featuring local government officials poorly edited into random footage from Star Wars, right? When the city’s deputy head, Nikolai Maslov, asked himself this question, he apparently looked up into the sky and screamed “Yes!” which is why we now have a video showing him and his colleagues piloting TIE Fighters, punching Darth Sidious, and taking selfies with Chewbacca. Some of people are also wearing astronaut suits, for some reason. And then the music kicks in, with folks playing imaginary musical instruments (including a drum set without drumsticks).

Maslov shared the video on Instagram, where he wrote that Novokuznetsk is like “a starship” traveling “its own path in the endless cosmic space, defeating adversities, cataclysms, and an ecological crisis.” The city’s state officials, he says, are like “astronauts” and an “intergalactic team.”

Novokuznetsk will celebrate the 400th anniversary of its founding in early July. By all accounts, it looks like it should be a good party.

Pharma karma 💊

Pharmacies won a major victory this week when Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova announced on Wednesday that the government is withdrawing a legislative proposal to allow grocery stores to sell certain kinds of over-the-counter medicines to treat fevers and stomach aches. Russia’s biggest pharmacy chains warned that they’d be forced to close up to half their stores, if the reforms went through.

Experts estimated that the medicines in question make up about 2.5 percent of Russia’s pharmaceutical market. Explaining the decision, Golikova cited “negative public feedback,” and pointed out that the Industry and Trade Ministry also asked the government to abandon the initiative.

Expanding the Russian military’s egghead troops 🤓

Russia’s Defense Ministry might start hiring contract soldiers to serve in its “research companies,” a senior official told the news agency TASS on Wednesday. Since 2013, the military has invited some university students and graduates to conduct research on its behalf. This service is equal to compulsory military service. There are currently seven research companies in the Russian military. According to the Defense Ministry, roughly a third of these conscripts have gone on to engineering careers in the defense industry.

University adversity

🎓 MFTI is miffed about an interview

The Academic Council at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MFTI) voted against extending the contract of Mikhail Balashov, a mathematics professor and member of the University Solidarity labor union, following his comments to Radio Liberty about the school’s internal restructuring debate. Balashov says he was fired for “obstructing MFTI’s development” by organizing the faculty and speaking to journalists. “They told me that Radio Liberty is an awful radio station,” he says.

In May, Radio Liberty published a story about MFTI’s controversial plan to restructure its departments, replacing them with “physicotechnical schools.” The reforms have apparently confused and angered many faculty, canceling several classes and throwing instructors’ course loads into chaos.

Grigory Ivanov, the head of MFTI’s advanced mathematics department, told the Academic Council that he suspects Balashov is “the victim of certain opposition-minded colleagues who wanted to put MFTI’s administration at the center of a big scandal,” speculating that his non-reappointment would lead to negative media coverage and possibly even some protests. “This scenario will have an extremely negative impact on the advanced mathematics department, many of whose members belong to the University Solidarity labor union,” Ivanov argued.

⚖ Outed by the FSB

A district court in Saratov has granted a request by the Federal Security Service to dismiss Igor Pleve as the rector of the Saratov State Technical University. Pleve is suspected of embezzling 125,000 rubles (almost $2,000) by employing an archivist who reportedly received a salary without performing the position’s job duties. Pleve contests the charges, and complained in court that the FSB’s petition came two days before the end of his current term as rector. He also said he’s been elected to another five-year term, though the Education Ministry has not formalized this appointment.

Mr. Four Percent 🛢

Police have reportedly concluded that at least 7.5 billion rubles ($118.6 million) was embezzled from funds allocated to the construction of the “Zvezda” shipyard in Primorye. The investigation into the theft has been underway since 2014, and the shipyard has been under construction since 2009. The key suspect in the case is Igor Borbot, the former general director of the Far Eastern Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Center, the Rosneft subsidiary responsible for coordinating the project. Borbot fled to the United States, which recently deported another suspect in the case, Alexey Boitsov, back to Russia. Boitsov has partially confessed.

Once it’s finished, the “Zvezda” shipyard will be Russia’s biggest. Rosneft has invested an estimated 200 billion rubles ($3.2 billion) in the project.

A very dedicated husband 💍

In 2016, a woman living in Magnitogorsk, Salima Muhamedyanova, reported that she was beaten and raped by the police. Her husband, Igor Gubanov, cut off two of his own fingers to protest investigators’ inaction. On April 10, 2018, a Magnitogorsk district court convicted her of filing a false police report and fined her 20,000 rubles ($316). An appellate court is scheduled to hear Muhamedyanova’s appeal on July 6, but her husband won’t be there to support her: On June 27, he suffered a heart attack and died.

Read Meduza’s special report on this story from April 2018: “A woman in Magnitogorsk says she was raped by the cops. Her husband cut off two fingers to draw attention to her case. Now she’s been convicted of filing a false police report.”

Rousing housing 🏘

Nadezhda Bulayeva, the head of the Central Administrative District Housing Inspectorate, is suing the independent television station Dozhd for airing comments accusing her of owning an undeclared home. Sergey Stepanyan, the man who made the allegations on air, is also named in the lawsuit. Bulayeva is asking for one million rubles ($15,800) in damages and demanding that the network retract the story. Dozhd has pointed out that local prosecutors previously determined that Bulayeva failed to report all her assets, leading to disciplinary measures.

To infinity and beyond 🌊

The Russian aerial and marine explorer Fyodor Konyukhov wants Vladimir Putin’s help for his next feat: diving to the bottom of the Mariana Trench — the deepest part of the world’s oceans. At an awards ceremony on June 27 at the Kremlin, Konyukhov made the request while receiving Russia’s Order of Honor.

Konyukhov holds the world records for fastest solo crossing of the Pacific Ocean in a rowboat (159 days, 14 hours, and 45 minutes) and fastest balloon trip around the Earth (11 days). He’s been talking about reaching the bottom of the Mariana Trench since the mid-1990s. In 2007, he reportedly planned such an expedition with the oceanologist Artur Chilingarov. It would be quite a trip: the maximum-known depth is 36,070 feet (almost seven miles).