Russian President Vladimir Putin has sounded the new year by telling the nation that they are going through difficult times, but that the Russians will achieve their goals if they stay together.
“We live in a turbulent, dynamic and contradictory time,” he said in the annual New Year’s speech. “But we can and must do everything for Russia to develop successfully, for everything in our lives to change for the better.”
Putin uttered the traditional salute just minutes before the Kremlin clock started in 2021 in Russia’s far east.
“Now, as we look forward to the ringing of the bells, we believe and hope that all our wishes will come true,” Putin said.
“The present and the future, as well as the future of our children, depend on the efforts and contributions of each of us,” he added. “Only together will we solve the problems facing our society and our country today. Our unity is the basis for achieving the highest goals.”
Earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that improving the standard of living was a major success in 2020 for Putin’s government.
“For objective reasons, the living standards of Russians were stagnant or declining. This negative trend was observed over the last three or four years,” he said. “This year we have been able to reverse this trend. So far we cannot talk about any substantial growth. However, this trend has been reversed.”
The Russians’ dissatisfaction with their economic situation was one of the many reasons that drove a protest movement that swept across the country in 2020 and contributed to Putin’s lowest approval ratings in more than a decade.
Official Russian statistics for the first quarter of 2020 showed that 20.9 million of Russia’s more than 142 million citizens lived in poverty, a slight increase over the same period in 2018.
The World Bank’s economic report on Russia released in December said economic growth in Russia increased after a weak first-half performance in 2020 and predicted a modest decline in poverty.
The UN Human Development Index, which measures social and economic inequality in a country, ranked Russia 49th out of 189 countries in 2020.