Feeling Pinch of Oil Collapse, Some Russians Take to Streets

KRASNODAR, Russia — Last year was bad enough financially for Sergei and Victoria Titov, both music teachers getting along in years. Her government salary was slashed by one third, and rampant inflation put some basic groceries like eggplant and cucumbers out of reach.

Then came Jan. 1, and the abrupt decision by the regional government here in Krasnodar, the capital ofRussia’s southern agricultural heartland, to chop transportation subsidies for older Russians, forcing the couple to limit their trolley rides.

Indignant and fearing worse amid Russia’s accelerating economic problems, Sergei joined an unauthorized demonstration last week by hundreds of older Russians who gathered under the bronze statue of a Cossack horseman on the main square here and chanted, “Return our benefits!”

They were not alone, neither in Krasnodar nor across this vast nation, where illegal protests and wildcat strikes are erupting with increasing frequency by truckers, teachers, factory workers and all sorts of Russians facing steep government cutbacks because of plummeting revenue from oil and gas.

The global collapse in oil prices is reordering economic relations around the world, but the change is particularly daunting for Russia, which relies on energy exports for 50 percent of its federal budget.

In December, President Vladimir V. Putin told the nation that the worst of the recession — the economy shrank 3.9 percent and inflation hit 12.9 percent in 2015 — was over and that modest growth would return in 2016. He has been pushing the oil collapse as an “opportunity” that will wean Russia off energy imports and diversify the economy.

Then in January oil fell below $30 per barrel, with no bottom in sight, andthe ruble hit a record low of nearly 85 to the dollar before recovering slightly.

The last time oil prices dropped so low and stayed there, in the 1980s, the Soviet Union disintegrated. Steadily rising prices since 2000 have lifted Russia out of poverty and economic chaos, buoying the prosperity of many Russians with it. Mr. Putin was lucky enough to be president for much of that period, but he now faces an extended decline, with real incomes shrinking.

With the federal budget approved in December based on oil at $50 a barrel, Anton Siluanov, the finance minister, announced that the country faced a budget deficit of about $40 billion, and ministries were ordered to cut spending 10 percent. Budgets were similarly guillotined last year.

In Krasnodar, Mr. Titov, 64, braced for harder times. “I do not know what they will cut, but I know it will affect us,” he said. “We are watching all this with alarm. It is clear that the government lacks the necessary resources to give us a normal life.”