The Russian poor get poorer and the rich richer

Many describe Russia as a kleptocratic dictatorship with Putin as chief thief. Putin has secretly accumulated more than $40bn (£20bn). The sum would make him Russia's - and Europe's - richest man. He owns vast holdings in three Russian oil and gas companies, concealed behind a "non-transparent network of offshore trusts". Putin "effectively" controls 37% of the shares of Surgutneftegaz, an oil exploration company and Russia's third biggest oil producer, worth $20bn, he says. He also owns 4.5% of Gazprom, and "at least 75%" of Gunvor, a mysterious Swiss-based oil trader, founded by Gennady Timchenko, a friend of the president's. Members of Putin's cabinet personally control the most important sectors of the economy - oil, gas and defence. Medvedev is chairman of Gazprom; Sechin runs Rosneft; other ministers are chairmen of Russian railways, Aeroflot, a nuclear fuel giant and an energy transport enterprise.
"The crown jewels of the country's wealth have ended up in the hands of Putin's inner circle," Vladimir Rzyhkov, a former independent MP, wrote in the Moscow Times.

Latest statistics from Russia reveal that those in poverty has risen 2.1 million since last year. The report showed that 14.9 percent of the population was below the poverty level.

Natalya Zagvozdina, the head of consumer research for the CIS at Renaissance Capital, noted that food prices inf lation of around 15 percent for the last year in Russia had especially hit the low-income population of the country. With little increase in pay for pensioners and public sector workers, the rising price of the consumer basket caught up and overtook more of them in the first half of 2011. Disposable incomes did not grow much for workers in the private sector either, said Orlova, where social taxes were also taking their toll as employers were less likely to raise salaries.
Natalya Orlova, the chief econo- mist at Alfa Bank, said that one of the key factors playing a role in rising poverty indicators was high income inequality, which was becoming more pronounced since the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis. “In Russia we have seen very weak disposable income growth, for the first half of this year it was slightly above one percent, and most likely this growth that we did have was driven by the increase in the richest population. These statistics show the impact of the crisis – the poorest sector of the population is becoming even poorer”

"The top 10 percent of the population receive 15 times as much as the poorest 10 percent," President Medvedev said. SOYMB wouldn't be at all surprised if this is very much an under-estimate

According to Forbes magazine, Russia had 101 billionaires in 2011, almost double the number of the previous year. Moscow is home to more of the world's wealthiest people than New York.

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Moscow, a city of 11.5 million has as many as 5 million migrants, more than half of them undocumented. The migrants, many of them from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, exist on the fringes of society, harassed by police, victimized by employers and disliked by Russians, once their fellow Soviet citizens. In Moscow, deep-seated prejudice against Central Asians (and people from Russia's Caucasus Mountains) gives restive young nationalists a target for their anger. Ethnic tension has been rising fostered by Putin’s populist brand of aggressive nationalism. About one Central Asian is killed every month in a racially motivated attack in the city, and many are beaten up, with numerous assaults unreported. Last year, according to the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, a Moscow nonprofit organization, 37 people were killed in Russia in racially motivated attacks and 368 reported injured, most of them Central Asians. The migrants come anyway, driven by desperation. Once they get work, employers may abuse workers and fail to pay them, leaving the migrants little recourse.