At a meeting with Minister of Culture, Aleksandr Avdeev, President Dmitry Medvedev was informed that prices for museum tickets are constantly rising.' Thus the President ordered prices frozen.

Privileges for disabled people and veterans of wars, and also for families with three or more children and needy families will be kept at a reasonable level.

Responding to the Minister’s complaint that excursion bureaus artificially inflated the prices for tickets and are reselling them Dmitry Medvedev emphasized that “structures creating cases of illegal increase of ticket costs, should be deprived of their licenses.”

In the middle of March, Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily published the data about new prices for museum tickets in Russia. The Tretyakov gallery in Moscow increased prices by 20 percent (from $1.40 US to $1.70 US). The Hermitage in St.Petersburg promised not to raise prices until May 10, 2009. The Pushkin museum raised the prices back in the summer of 2008. But the most significant growth in price has affected museums of the Moscow Kremlin where prices for visiting some of the objects have doubled and are now up to $20 US.