MOSCOW
— Moving quickly to envelop Crimea in the Russian bureaucracy and
economy, the Kremlin said Monday that it had nearly doubled pensions
paid to retirees on the peninsula, raising them to the average levels
paid in Russia.
President
Vladimir V. Putin signed a decree raising pensions and another
increasing salaries for public sector workers like teachers and doctors,
according to a statement posted on the Kremlin’s website. Officials
also announced a number of new investment plans and tax breaks for Crimea, which Russia seized
from Ukraine two weeks ago after a rushed vote in the Crimean
Legislature. The Crimeans even realigned the clock, moving theirs ahead
two hours, to be identical with Moscow’s time zone.
To
reinforce the message from Moscow, Russia’s prime minister, Dmitri A.
Medvedev, traveled to the region’s capital to hold a meeting with
members of the cabinet and local officials.
In what American officials interpreted as an encouraging sign on Monday
that Russia would not invade other regions of Ukraine, the German
government released a statement saying Mr. Putin told Chancellor Angela
Merkel in a telephone call that he had ordered a partial withdrawal of
Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern border, a source of great
tension with Western governments in recent weeks.
Russia’s Medvedev Visits Crimea
Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia
spoke in Crimea where he held a meeting with members of his Cabinet and
local officials.
The
German statement characterized the troop movement as described by Mr.
Putin as “the partial withdrawal of Russian troops ordered from the
eastern border of Ukraine.”
There
was no direct confirmation from Russian officials. The Kremlin’s
statement describing the same telephone conversation made no mention of
any troop withdrawals. It said only that the leaders “discussed various
aspects of the situation in Ukraine, including the possibility for
international involvement in restoring stability” and that the pair had
also talked about constitutional overhaul in Ukraine and another
troubled region of Eastern Europe, the separatist Transnistria region of
Moldova.
The
Ministry of Defense posted a statement online saying one mechanized
battalion, a unit that would typically consist of about 500 men, had
completed exercises in the Rostov region, which borders Ukraine, and was
returning to base elsewhere in Russia.
The
troops had simply completed their exercises, the statement said,
without clarifying whether this relatively modest troop movement
signaled any broader pullback from the Ukrainian border.
American
officials, who estimate the Russians have deployed 40,000 to 50,000
troops near the Ukrainian border, reacted positively to the apparent
pullback, whatever its size.
“If
reports that Russia is removing some troops from the border region are
accurate, it would be a welcome preliminary step,” said Jen Psaki, a
State Department spokeswoman. “We would urge Russia to accelerate this
process. We also continue to urge Russia to engage in a dialogue with
the government in Kiev to de-escalate the situation, while respecting
the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Mr.
Medvedev’s visit was also a show of defiance to the West, coming just
hours after Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s foreign minister,
Sergey V. Lavrov, failed to agree on a diplomatic solution to the Crimean crisis at late night talks in Paris. Mr. Kerry called the annexation “illegal and illegitimate.”
Mr. Medvedev said Crimea would become a special economic zone with tax breaks for businesses that invest in the region.
Russia’s
retirement benefits are not high by the standards of developed
countries but are higher than those in Ukraine, a condition that has
proved one appeal of the annexation for residents of the peninsula,
which includes many Soviet military veterans.
The
average monthly pension in Russia in 2013 was about 10,000 rubles,
according to the RIA state news agency, or $285 at the current exchange
rate. In comparison, the average pension in Ukraine in December was
$160. Raising retirement benefits on the peninsula is sure to prove
popular, though its cost compared with the size of Russia’s budget is
only modest. About a third of Crimea’s two million people are retirees;
Russia, excluding the newly annexed region, has a population of 143
million. At a recent cabinet meeting, Mr. Medvedev said increasing
pensions to Russian levels would cost about $1 billion this year.
Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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