“Vladímir Vladimirovich, take care of the pensioners!” Irina Akopova said, sitting at her kitchen table, to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. This woman from Krasnodar gave voice, during the annual question and answer appearance of the head of the Kremlin, to the main concern of Russians: the rise in prices, especially of chicken eggs, a basic food that has gone through the roof and costs 40% more than last year.
“A dozen eggs”, the usual format in Russia, “costs 180 to 220 rubles. Chicken breast used to cost 165 rubles, now 350. Wings, before 165; now, 250. Vladimir Vladimirovich, take care of the pensioners, put order, we have no one to turn to,” he explained.
Eggs were a very affordable food and at the beginning of the year they could be purchased for about 70 rubles (0.71 euros). Its rapid rise in price, a product of the current situation (war with Ukraine, confrontation with the West), has made consumers nervous.
“Everyone buys them, because they are cheaper than meat. And especially this month, with the New Year and the holiday week that follows. If they go up more, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” says a retiree from Moscow, Olga, who contemplates and does the math in front of the shelves of a hypermarket. The fear is that the situation will get so bad that many will not be able to afford the most typical dish of the upcoming holidays in Russia, the Olivier salad (Russian salad).
This year’s continued price rise exploded in November. According to the Svobodnie Media portal, in Krasnodar the ten eggs increased that month at a rate of 7% per week. The official Rosstat statistics say that so far in 2023 this product has become more expensive by 25%, 40% if we take the year-on-year period from November to November.
In his television marathon, Putin acknowledged that the Achilles heel of the Russian economy is inflation, which could approach 8% this year. And, in a scene rarely seen, he apologized: “I apologize for this, but it is a mistake in the work of the Government… I promise it will be corrected.”
The production of chicken eggs depends largely on feed, dietary supplements and vaccines, “which are purchased at the price of an increasing dollar,” economist Dimitri Prokofiev explained in Komsomolskaya Pravda. Its increase in price is indirectly caused by Western sanctions on imported products. You also have to add transportation fees and the cost of spare parts and equipment repair, items that are not normally produced in Russia.
Videos of long lines of consumers in markets in Belgorod and Voronezh have been shared on social networks, an image that recalls the worst years of the Soviet Union and the difficult nineties. In the case of the first of these cities, ten eggs were sold for 65 rubles (0.66 euros), while in the nearby supermarket they were worth 150.
This has raised another fear: that stores will run out of stock. Some regional governments are imposing limitations on purchases. Yulia Schedrina, deputy governor of Belgorod, announced that in the markets you cannot buy more than two dozen eggs per person. Several supermarket chains in Yekaterinburg and Astrakhan do not allow a customer to purchase more than three boxes.
The authorities decided to take action on the matter before Mrs. Apókova spoke to Putin. The State Antimonopoly Service is investigating manufacturers and in some regions they carry out inspections.
The Ministry of Agriculture, for its part, announced that egg imports from Turkey and Azerbaijan would begin this week. This department hopes that with this and other measures (such as the elimination of tariffs on imported poultry feed) the prices of the essential ingredient in Russian salad will stabilize in the coming months.
But in the Russian ecosystem there is nothing that works better than the principle of authority. Only a few hours passed after the conversation between the retiree and the president when Akópova explained that the price of eggs in his city had suddenly begun to drop.
