Page 40 - RusRPTApr23

Labour shortages drive inflation. This is because pay rises are the mechanism that most companies intend to use to keep and attract workers: 82% of businesses raised staff pay in 2022 and a further 73% plan to do so in 2023, according to a Central Bank survey. In other words, we will likely see significant pay rises this year.
This does not correlate with increased productivity. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), over the decade from 2011 to 2021, labour productivity in Russia fell 1% per year (calculated as the ratio of GDP to total labour force).
2.13 Putin comments on Russian weapons production
Russian president Vladimir Putin gave an interview to the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Corporation, which ran the interview on state-run television network Russia 24. Meduza shares the most important parts of Putin’s remarks.
“There are threats, of course. We know about plans to supply weapons to Ukraine, including a million shells. Is that a lot or a little? It’s a decently large amount, it’s a lot. The U.S. produces 14,000–15,000 shells a month. Ukraine’s armed forces use up to 5,000 shells a day,” Putin said.
“Russia’s armed forces use much more than that. I don’t want to assess the rationality of decisions at various levels of military command. We know that the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff have had to impose limits. But Russia’s military-industrial complex is running at a much faster pace than most expected. And Russia is producing three times as much ammunition as the instigators of the conflict.”
“The instigators plan to send Ukraine 420–440 tanks. We’re producing and modernizing more than 1,600 tanks. The total quantity of tanks will be three times higher than the number Ukraine has. In terms of aircraft, the difference is 10 orders of magnitude. The U.K. promised to supply Ukraine with ammunition with depleted uranium. We have hundreds of thousands of rounds of such ammunition. We’re not yet using them.”
“Alexander Lukashenko [the president of Belarus] asked a long time ago about deploying tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus. The U.S. has done this for decades, placing tactical nuclear weapons on their allies’ territory. We’re doing the same thing. There are 10 aircraft in the Belarusian Air Force ready to use this type of weapon. We transferred an Iskander ballistic missile system to Belarus, and it can also support [tactical nuclear weapons]. We’ll complete construction on a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus on July 1.”
“We will not allow excessive militarization of the economy.”
40 RUSSIA Country Report Russia April 2023 www.intellinews.com