“Uncle Vova, help!”: what Russians wrote about on Putin’s direct line

On December 14, there will be a direct line from the President of the Russian Federation, where citizens’ questions will be voiced. The number of requests has exceeded a million. Dmitry Peskov noted that this is “an excellent sociological cross-section for analyzing” the problems of Russians.

We found out what people are asking for. Hundreds of video messages to the President’s Direct Line have appeared on social networks in recent weeks. We have collected some complaints from Russians that are publicly available.

“The local population is running without looking back”

Several dozen residents of Kondrovo, Kaluga region, held posters in their video message: “We are being poisoned.” People shout: “We want to breathe clean air.” Then they retell the essence of the problem: “At the beginning of 2020, an enterprise for growing champignon mushrooms opened here. Our life has become hell. During the final technological process of processing a mixture of rotten straw and chicken droppings, a fetid, suffocating smell of carrion spreads throughout the city. There is no way to open the window and go outside with the children.”

Residents of a village in Karelia are asking for a solution to a critical water situation: “We have no access to clean water due to the lack of wells and running water. We cannot use natural sources of water, since they are polluted by non-functioning wastewater treatment plants that have exhausted their resources. The next topic is roads: it is difficult to travel at any time of the year, the old asphalt surface has become unusable. Without resolving these issues, the village will perish.”

A woman from the Karelian village of Selga complained about the inaccessibility of public transport: “Buses don’t run, people take taxis, children are carried on boats. According to officials, transport in the village “is not economically profitable. Residents of small villages have rights to medicine, but there is no opportunity to realize these rights. They have no access to libraries, the Internet, MFC, theaters, museums, hairdressers, free dental prosthetics for veterans, etc. The state should not abandon people!”

Tver residents complained about the lack of schools in the Chaika microdistrict: “Children study in three shifts. Teachers work 40 hours a week, with no professional or creative fulfillment, just to avoid burnout. The new school was promised to be built in 2023, but the plans were subsequently abandoned. We don’t need inspections of schools and teachers, we need another school.”

Residents of the Energetik microdistrict in Ulan-Ude asked the president not to allow the construction of a colony for 4,000 places in the city, explaining that “the local population is already fleeing from here without looking back.”

“The factory was taken away from the blind”

“Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, I am addressing you from the city of Syzran, Samara region. My son and daughter-in-law are hearing impaired, group 3. My son receives a pension of 8500. My daughter-in-law received an increase of 1000 after giving birth, now she has 9500. I have to help them with my pension. There is no dairy kitchen for babies in the city. No children’s hospital! After all this, I will tell the children not to give birth again.”

We contacted the author of the appeal.

“These are not all the problems of our city, I described only a drop in the ocean,” says Elena Okladnikova. “The small factory where they collected tourniquets was taken away from the blind. Disabled people are left without work, survive on their pensions, stay at home, and sometimes participate in checkers competitions. Should I continue?…

A resident of the village of Ulkan, Kazachinsko-Lensky district, Irkutsk region, complained about the lack of doctors: “I understand that our village is small, only 4,000 people, but we are also sick. We need health workers. We have one therapist, who is also the head physician of the hospital and a dentist. The pediatrician comes three times a week for 5-minute appointments by appointment. There are not enough paramedics at the ambulance service. Apart from the old X-ray, there is no other equipment in the hospital. You can do an ultrasound and take tests, for example, blood from a finger, in another village. Getting there is problematic – transport links are interrupted. The bus driver quit. Others have not paid a salary of 40 thousand and bought ruined equipment for almost a year.”

– Previously, we had two therapists, two pediatricians, two dentists, and a surgeon. But due to our remoteness from civilization, doctors stopped coming to us,” added the author of the letter, Marina Chernova. “A young pediatrician arrived in the spring, but she ran away almost immediately. After all, we lack almost all structures – a notary, lawyers, pension, social security and others are located 60 km from us. There is no regular communication here: either the bus broke down, or the driver quit…

The problem with medicine was also described to the president by residents of the closed city of Seversk, Tomsk Region: “There is not a single doctor in the city of 17 thousand. There is no hematologist, neurosurgeon, allergist, rheumatologist, or pediatric neurologist. Ambulance vehicles rotted. Save medicine in Seversk.”

“Give us a school”

The children of the Multina school in the Ust-Koksinsky district of the Altai Territory asked for the return of their boxing coach, who was forced to resign.

And children from Ufa have a different problem: “Many new houses have been built on Sorge Street, but they cannot build schools. We decided to demolish our beloved pool. The skating rink was closed. Santa Claus, all hope is in you. Give us a school. Uncle Vova, help!”

In the city of Shenkursk, Arkhangelsk region, people asked to pay attention to the lack of a bridge: “Doctors don’t come to work with us, there aren’t enough teachers, the crossing is unstable and everything is unstable. A woman in labor with contractions was transported at night on rubber boats. At one time, they could not deliver everyday goods, there was no food, there was no fuel.”

Pensioners from the Ulyanovsk region are begging for the return of lands seized by fraud: “All meadows and pastures around the village have been plowed and sown by farmers. We are in a powerless situation. We need land to live and work on. We ask you to protect our rights, Vladimir Vladimirovich, you are our last hope.”

Defrauded shareholders from the village of Pervy, Kostroma Region, reported that they were deprived of their housing. People recorded a video message holding a poster. One says: “I’m Russian, but I’m homeless.” At the end of the address, lines from the song SHAMAN were heard: “I am Russian and I am lucky.” One of the authors of the message turned out to be a pensioner of the Ministry of Internal Affairs: “I went through hot spots – Karabakh, Chechnya, and paid my debt to my homeland with honor. And now we ask you to let our homeland protect us. We were left without houses and money.”

Among the appeals to the president there are also minor requests. For example, residents of the city of Kudymkar, Perm Territory, are asking the president to replace old windows with plastic ones in a three-story apartment building: “A private organization asked for almost 200 thousand rubles. Each apartment yields almost 8,000. Most of the residents are pensioners and have nothing to pay.”

A resident of the village of Ulkan, Irkutsk region, complained about the low pension of 13,325: “Our region is equal to the region of the Far North, where the cost of living is 16,908. But I was refused additional payment. Please sort it out.”

A pensioner from Kostroma is also dissatisfied with the low pension: “I am 77 years old, have 55 years of work experience and I receive a meager pension of 17 thousand rubles. I know people whose pension is less than 10 thousand rubles. You can’t even call them beggars…”

Women from the city of Pyshma, Sverdlovsk region, demand the return of bus service: “We have been deprived of transport links with Yekaterinburg. Now we take the municipal tram with transfers, which takes 30 minutes, and sometimes an hour more. These connections are exhausting. We sacrifice sleep because we get up earlier. In the evenings, when people return from work, this state of affairs takes away energy.”