Russia’s state statistics agency Rosstat has stopped publishing data on the salaries and headcount of federal and municipal officials, the independent research platform To Be Precise reported, in the latest move to limit the public’s access to information about the public sector.
Rosstat has also removed data on the share of women among municipal employees, an indicator previously used to track progress toward the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Salary information for the social sector and academia has also been made unavailable, the project said, with pay data for medical personnel, teachers, university lecturers, orphanage staff, cultural workers and scientists vanishing.
Statistics for the third quarter of 2024 were due at the end of November, but the platform instead carried a notice of a temporary suspension of publication.
Rosstat has not disclosed salary data for civilian employees of government agencies, which were previously published annually, since 2022.
According to the latest available figures, these officials’ average monthly income stood at 79,800 rubles ($1,040), rising to 197,000 rubles ($2,570) in federal bodies.
By comparison, the nationwide average monthly salary in 2022 was 65,300 rubles ($850), while the median wage was 40,300 rubles ($526).
Sberbank CEO German Gref said Wednesday that Russian civil servants live in “impoverished conditions” and called for them to be paid more, arguing this would reduce the number of “corrupt fools” in government.
At the same time, Gref acknowledged that “It’s human nature to always be figuring out how to get rich.”
The exiled news outlet Faridaily reported that 246 million rubles ($3.2 million) had been allocated in the 2025 federal budget to cover the salaries of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and his 10 deputies. On average, each received a post-tax income of around 1.3 million rubles ($17,000) per month.
President Vladimir Putin allowed himself, lawmakers and other officials to stop filing public income declarations in December, scrapping rules in place since 1995.
Declarations are now required only upon entering public service, appointment to a new post, transfer to another government body or for inclusion in higher-level federal management bodies.
Officials must also report income when conducting transactions exceeding their family’s combined earnings over three years.
Transparency International has ranked Russia 157th out of 182 countries for public-sector corruption.
Read this story in Russian at The Moscow Times’ Russian service.
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