Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The displaced residents include many vulnerable individuals, among them elderly pensioners, single mothers, and people suffering from chronic health conditions.
Inside a converted sanatorium in the pine forests south of Moscow, a few hundred people have spent much of the war waiting to see whether the Kremlin’s promise that ‘we don’t abandon our own’ would apply to them.
They are Russian pensioners from the Kursk border, Ukrainian civilians who fled the Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv regions, and single mothers whose hometowns no longer exist in any practical sense.
Now, their time has run out. Around 246 refugees housed at a temporary accommodation center in the Tula region face a final eviction deadline set by regional authorities, with no replacement housing on offer, The Insider reports.
The Tula regional government adopted the eviction decree in May, citing a shortage of regional budget funds. The original deadline was September 1. It was pushed to October 1, and then to October 15. In early October, management told residents there would be no further extensions.
‘Nobody wants us’
The reporting on the sanatorium comes from the independent Russian journalism cooperative Bereg, whose team visited the center and spoke with residents.
Alina, who fled Soledar in eastern Ukraine, told the reporters she had taken the Kremlin’s promise at its word. “We just believed in Russia, believed the words ‘We don’t abandon our own.’ Those exact words,” she said.
Since arriving, Alina has developed rheumatoid arthritis; before she can access Russian state-funded steroids, she must pay for the medical examinations required to register a disability.
Vera Nikolayevna, a 72-year-old pensioner from a Kursk border village, said returning home was not an option. “There are explosions and gunfire, and drones are flying around. We’ve been here all this time, and we’ll go home and get killed,” she said.
Tatyana, a railroad worker from Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, told Bereg the sense of abandonment was the hardest part. “We supported the Russians so much. It hurts that nobody wants us.”
An appeal to Putin that went unanswered
On October 4, around 70 residents gathered in a clearing beneath the pines and recorded a video appeal to Vladimir Putin, asking him to halt the eviction. It was at least their second such appeal; a similar video was sent in June, according to The Moscow Times.
The refugees said they had petitioned the regional Social Protection Ministry, the prosecutor’s office, and Tula Governor Dmitry Milyaev without result.
Many of the Ukrainian residents named hometowns that are now ruins or closed military zones, among them Vovchansk, Izium, Yampil, and Artyomovsk. Housing certificates promised in exchange for destroyed homes have never been issued, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported.
Residents said that once their temporary registration at the sanatorium lapses, they will lose access to pensions, medical care, and the right to enroll children in Russian schools.
Exemptions cover people with Group I or II disabilities and their families, families with disabled children, and orphans; refugees who arrived in the region after August 20 are allowed to stay for up to six months.
