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Putin Gives a Pay Rise to Himself and Medvedev

Putin's salary is currently estimated at about 270,000 rubles ($7,500) a month or 3,360,000 rubles per year.

President Vladimir Putin is set to receive an almost threefold increase in his salary, according to a decree published Monday on the Kremlin website.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will also see his salary increased by 2.65 times, said the decree that came into effect last Friday.

Putin's salary is currently estimated at about 270,000 rubles ($7,500) a month or 3,360,000 rubles per year, Vedomosti reported.

The decree comes after government officials income declarations were made public on Friday, showing that Putin received 3,672,208 rubles ($102,660) in 2013 and Medvedev took home 4,259,525 rubles — a decrease from the previous year's earnings.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that unused holiday days accounted for the difference from 2012, for which both Putin and Medvedev received financial compensation, and that their salaries had actually remained consistent.

The numbers were modest compared to the figures declared by some of the richest people in the government; First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov was said to have earned 241 million rubles in 2013, in addition to the 237 million rubles earned by his wife, according to documents posted Friday on the Cabinet's website.

The top earner in the Kremlin administration was Putin's representative to the Crimean Federal District, Oleg Belaventsyev, who was appointed to the job after Russia's annexation of the peninsula last month. Belaventsyev made 79.5 million rubles last year, according to income declarations published on the Kremlin website.

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