MOSCOW, March 6 (UPI) -- Russian state officials' salaries will be reduced 10 percent, President Vladimir Putin ordered Friday, starting with his own pay.
The cuts were decreed to demonstrate solidarity with a population dealing with economic recession and a government preparing to reduce its budget in the wake of economic sanctions, the decline in value of the Russian ruble and a continued global oversupply, and correspondingly low prices, of oil, Russia's most prominent export.