‘They let him die and washed their hands of it’: Russian officials are refusing death benefits to a war widow left with 10 children, offering a family excursion instead
c/russia · u/Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org · 4 points
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The Tambov regional government promised to “look into the situation” and offered to arrange an excursion to the city of Tambov for the children. Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, publicly ordered a criminal case opened into the refusal to pay benefits. Local officials who attended Andrey’s funeral promised “all kinds of support” for the Kuzmin family. And ahead of September’s elections, they repeated their pledges of help for the “soldier’s large family.”
“In reality, it’s not just no help — it’s negative help!” Lyubov said. “They cut the child benefits. It was 75 percent of the subsistence minimum, now it’s 50. Do we know why? Nobody explained! They promised help with paying for kindergarten fees, with school meals, with firewood, but in reality — nothing. They tell us to go around filing applications, but no one explains what she actually has the right to ask for.”
**‘That’s how officials treat everyone’**
Alexander, a neighbor who helped Natalia record her video appeal, said that when she visited the district administration, officials brushed her off: as a mother of 10, she was already “receiving everything she was entitled to.”
“That’s how the officials treat everyone,” he said. “Rotten trees along the roads and in the villages — we cut them down ourselves. […] There’s no street lighting at all, not a single lamp post. We’ve filed complaint after complaint, hoping they’d at least do something before elections. No response. Or if they answer at all, it’s just: ‘There’s no money.’”
Locals suspect that the authorities denied Natalia benefits for the same reason — because there simply wasn’t money in the public budget.
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