Any issue that draws Putin’s ire during one of these Zoom-style meetings suddenly gets the full attention of the government — when it might have been left on the back burner before.
Take a meeting last week as an example. Putin went off on the price of pasta, leaving government officials scrambling and the Russian public wondering why — of all things — the president was focused on plates of spaghetti.
Yet there was no mistaking his dismay. He scolded ministers over surging food prices, particularly outraged over the 10.5 percent rise in the cost of pasta despite a good wheat harvest.
Most Russians “eat navy-style pasta,” Putin said. “Moreover, it is not of Italian production, but of ours. Well, this [price increase] is unacceptable! With such large harvests!”
Though Russia cuisine isn’t known for pasta, it’s still a popular and easy-to-prepare side dish in many households. A box costs approximately 82 cents in Moscow stores, which is generally cheaper than most brands in U.S. stores.
One person commented on Twitter that while Putin has harped on the price of “navy-style pasta,” oligarch Alexei Mordashov just “added to his fleet” with a new $300 million superyacht.
Russians have been hit harder with the inflation of other more popular goods. Putin also quoted a 70 percent increase in the price of sugar this year. The cost of sunflower oil is up by 24 percent, flour by 13 percent and bread by more than 6 percent, he said.
“Resolve this within a week,” Putin told Maxim Reshetnikov, the economy minister. “People limit themselves because they have no money for basic food. What are you doing? This is the question! This is no joke!”
Though the meeting took place Dec. 9, it wasn’t aired on state television until Sunday. Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev said he “hopes it will stabilize next week.” Putin was not pleased.
“I am not satisfied with this wording in this case!” he shot back. “Not ‘I hope,’ but you tell me that it will be stabilized as early as next week. Both you and Reshetnikov!”
The next day, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin held a meeting to discuss fixing the price of some goods for the first quarter of next year, including pasta and sunflower oil. An op-ed in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday referred to Putin as “knight of sunflower.”
Putin’s tirade and one-week deadline were conveniently timed for just before his annual marathon news conference on Thursday. Inflation is projected to hit nearly 5 percent this year, according to Reshetnikov, while real incomes have plummeted by more than 4 percent.
But Putin is facing potential scrutiny for more than just the country’s economic woes.
An investigation from the website Proekt last month claimed to uncover that Putin has a 17-year-old daughter from an extramarital affair with a woman named Svetlana Krivonogikh, who went from working as a cleaner to having assets worth approximately $102 million. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, “This is the first time I’ve ever heard of such a woman and I can’t tell you anything about it.”
Then on Monday, the website Bellingcat released a joint investigation detailing how a team of Russian state security officers trailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny for years, including on the Siberian trip that he was poisoned in August. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov canceled briefings with reporters on Tuesday and Wednesday.
So Thursday’s news conference could be the first time Putin could address the report that the near-fatal attack on Navalny was ordered by Moscow.
Even Putin’s edict to freeze food prices has been met with skepticism.
Oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a Putin ally, told the business RBC newspaper that the rising prices aren’t surprising because farmers are given such high-interest loans, suggesting that the problem will persist until that’s solved. The Kremlin-leaning Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper quoted experts who cautioned against price caps.
Instagram personality Stas Kruglitsky, who has nearly 2 million followers, asked in a post why Putin didn’t instead criticize the poverty in the country.
“This entire story is a perfect reflection of the essence of Putin's governance,” Evgeny Karasyuk wrote for Republic.ru.
“Time and time again,” Karasyuk continued, “we witness a carnival of trashy populism consisting of contradictions between the strategy and the tactic of the state itself: the degradation of the government ready to urgently extinguish any fire pointed at by the Kremlin.”
December 16, 2020 at 10:07PM
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Putin is boiling over rising pasta prices in Russia. It seems more about populism than penne. - The Washington Post
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