Published: Less than 20 min ago
Putin’s invasion has made a difficult everyday life worse in Russia’s poor regions.
The residents of the village of Bukachacha feel as if they too have survived a war.
– Mariupol will be rebuilt. We live in ruins and will continue to do so, says bus driver Andrej Epov.
The baker has been sent to war, along with the only men in the village who could deliver water to the elderly.
A large proportion of men of suitable age in Bukachacha in the Siberian province of Zabaykalsky were swept away when Putin ordered the mobilization in September.
Now, if possible, life is even more miserable than it was before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Compare with Mariupol
Radio Free Europe has been and made a report in the hard-to-reach village in eastern Russia.
– The authorities forgot about Bukachacha. They remembered us just now during the mobilization, says Andrej Epov, who makes a living by transporting passengers between the village and the nearest city of Chita, to the site.
The region’s factories from the Soviet era have long since closed and the main supply comes from coal mining.
Epov compares life in the village to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which was bombed to pieces by Russia at the beginning of the war.
– Life is like after a war. There is only one difference. Mariupol will be rebuilt. We live in ruins and will continue to do so.
As the houses lack running drinking water, men in the village were employed to deliver water to the elderly.
– The drivers we had have been taken away, says a local official.
Fetching water in buckets
So now the elderly are forced to walk several kilometers to a well outside the village to fill their buckets.
According to an elderly lady, they have tried to find a replacement, but all the candidates have turned out to be alcoholics, writes Radio Free Europe.
Another woman in the village tells the journalists that her 27-year-old son Gera was mining coal when he received his summons order.
– Just like everyone else, he was taken from home, put on a bus and driven away, she says.
The son is now transporting military equipment from southern Russia to the other side of the Ukrainian border.
– He was neutral on the issue of the war, but when I tried to get him to save himself from mobilization, he refused. He said he would fight if the motherland called. I didn’t try to stop him after that, she says to Radio Free Europe.
It is not only the elderly in Bukachacha who have had it worse since Putin launched his war of aggression against Ukraine.
Called in the baker
The 200 students at the school no longer have a school bus because the driver is mobilised.
In addition, there is a great lack of equipment. The gym teacher has to buy balls for the lessons for his own salary, the computers are old and don’t work.
There is hardly any mobile coverage. Internet only works at night.
Several of the children also live with the uncertainty of the war since family members have been mobilized.
The local bakery, and the village’s only seller of bread, may soon be forced to close. Since the baker was mobilized, it is his mother who now runs the company. And she can’t last much longer.
She says that her son Vladislav received the summons when he was buying flour in another city.
He said it was his duty to show up for Putin’s war.
– I don’t see it as a duty, but as a fear of how the neighbors will react if you refuse. Now I regret listening to him, says Tatyana Akhmadulina to Radio Free Europe.
– I will try to get him back. I will write to the prosecutor. I’m scared of course, I’m scared for my son.
“Already dying like flies”
She says that the son had to buy the equipment he needed for the mobilization with his own money – including spare parts for the armored transport vehicle he was to travel in.
One of the few places in Bukachacha that is buzzing with activity is the cemetery.
Even before the war and mobilization, the grave sites were quickly filled up due to the dangerous and unhealthy coal mining in the area.
– This place is, so to speak, not made for the living. We are already dying like flies without the war. And soon we have to bury the young people taken from Ukraine, says local pensioner Andrej to Radio Free Europe.
– They have already prepared a piece of land for new burials. They say if it’s not enough they can find more.