Deputies from the faction Fair Russia – For Truth, led by Sergei Mironov, introduced a bill on Tuesday, December 6, proposing an annual additional pension payment for state retirees through the Duma.
According to the draft, the funds would be accrued on New Year’s Eve for the first time this month. The text calls for amendments to the Federal Law On Insurance Pensions, stating that every pensioner receiving an old-age pension would receive an extra payment, referred to as a 13th pension, once every December.
The bill also suggests doubling the fixed payment within old-age insurance pensions for recipients over 70, noting that the current legal framework already provides a similar provision for citizens aged 80 and older. The authors argue that approving these changes would reinforce the state’s social responsibility toward individuals whose childhood and youth were spent under the hardships of the Great Patriotic War and the postwar economic recovery.
They contend that retirees constitute a highly vulnerable segment of society and that the state has a duty to support them through additional financial transfers, as stated by Mironov.
There is concern about the availability of funds
Svetlana Bessarab, a member of the State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy and Veterans Affairs from United Russia, described the introduction of a 13th pension as impractical. She noted that a 13th salary in organizations is tied to annual financial results that exceed plans, with cautious employers occasionally sharing surplus earnings with staff. She questioned the concept of a 13th month as a continuous element of the national pension system.
Bessarab described Russia’s pension framework as a system of cooperative pension insurance, with monthly contributions defined by law. She indicated that it remained unclear where the funds for a 13th pension would originate, and criticized the plan as lacking a realistic funding model. She argued that implementing such a measure would require about 600 billion rubles, which she believed the budget could not currently accommodate.
Viktor Lyashok, a senior researcher at the RANEPA Institute for Social Analysis and Forecasting, offered perspective on the proposal. He observed that 13th pensions are part of some Western practices, particularly in Italy, Poland, and Hungary. He suggested that if such a payment were to be adopted in Russia, it might necessitate a proportional reduction in regular monthly transfers. He also emphasized that paying a 13th pension from salaries via insurance fees would be untenable since insurance contributions have closely tracked pension growth in nominal terms since 2022.
Principles of social justice
At the end of December 2021, the LDPR faction, led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, submitted a bill to the State Duma proposing an annual New Year’s Eve pension payment equal to the pension received by a given citizen. The government subsequently voiced a negative assessment of the idea, noting that pensions exist to compensate for lost earnings or health damage, and that the proposed payment would not be compensatory but an extra form of financial support.
officials warned that tying the amount to the actual pension received could disrupt the existing balance of social protection measures and undermine the principle of social justice, as different categories of pensioners would receive unequal support. It was also noted that from January 1, 2023, insured pension indexation would increase by 4.8 percent, with the average wage expected to reach about 20,864 rubles in December 2022 (according to the Ministry of Labor). The cost of living for 2023 was set at 14,375 rubles by the government, while inflation projections for 2022 and 2023 were reported at around 12.4 percent and 5.5 percent respectively by the Ministry of Economic Development.
These contextual details help frame the broader fiscal and social considerations surrounding any proposed enhancement of pension payments.