RUSSIA: Russia scaled back part of its programme to cut social benefits yesterday after stormy scenes in parliament and a no-confidence motion against the government.
With more pensioner protests against cuts in free transport and medicine planned for later this week, the authorities said that some categories of benefit would be restored.
The announcement followed angry scenes in parliament, with opposition MPs accusing the government of abandoning the most needy.
"In a country where we have tuberculosis, where you have to pay for the test on AIDS infection, where privileged medications become expensive, what kind of trust for the government can we talk about here?" said Mr Victor Zhuganov, leader of the Communist Party.
The pensions protest has become the biggest crisis facing President Vladimir Putin in his five years of power. His party, United Russia, easily voted down the no-confidence motion, having passed the package of benefit cuts last year, but MPs demanded a rethink.
At issue is raising the cash payments - currently about €5 a month - given to pensioners for the loss of benefits worth much more.
Free benefits are to be restored to war veterans, orphans and people in specialised categories, such as those who fought the Chernobyl radioactivity leak in the 1980s. But the government is pressing ahead with cuts in benefits for the country's 40 million pensioners.
MPs blamed the government for not ensuring that cash payments were larger, while Prime Minister Mr Mikhail Fradhkov said that regional governments were to blame.
"You think I have not woken up? I woke up already," Mr Fradhkov told parliament. "I know that we should do something. It's not the time to discuss who lives poorer than the others."
Regional governments in turn say that they have no money to raise payments to pensioners.
MPs said the government was on borrowed time to solve the crisis. "All the gingerbread has been given already," said nationalist firebrand Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky, chastising the government for being mean-minded.
The government had hoped to slash Soviet-era benefits to put the economy on a more even keel, but pensioners complain that, with a state pension of less than €100 a month, they cannot survive additional hardship.
This crisis has seen President Putin's popularity slide to an all-time low and much will depend on the vigour of new protests due to take place today and over the weekend.