The problem of providing housing for military personnel has never left the category of acute problems in Russia. Any person holding the post of Head of State said that every Russian officer was about to receive his long-awaited housing. Only each Chapter added that it was necessary to wait a little longer. People waited, time passed, various programs were developed, certificates were offered, but even now tens of thousands of servicemen remain on the territory of the country, wandering in rented apartments. At the same time, even retirement for an officer today is no longer a guarantee of his own housing. Military officials may declare that housing is still being built, they say, just … wait a couple more years. And the person, meanwhile, has given the service for twenty years, health and strength, and he simply cannot wait for the end of the new term. But this seems to be of little concern.
Against this background, the news that the Ministry of Defense wants to completely get rid of the residential complexes of those garrisons where military service is no longer carried out with thunder flashed through. In Siberia alone, there are at least a thousand such "dying out" garrisons. And if this is multiplied by the number of inhabitants in each of them, then the military department wants to put an end to tens of thousands of people, putting them in an absolutely hopeless situation. What lies behind the transfer of the military fund under municipal responsibility. First, the residents of such towns will simply "hang" between a rock and a hard place, since neither the municipalities nor the military are willing to spend money on infrastructure rehabilitation. The second is a new wave of unemployment, because people can neither sell such housing, nor move to another place, leaving it. It's a strange situation, a person, of course, can leave his "barrack", but bills will continue to come regularly to his mailbox. This happened to one officer's family, who decided to permanently leave an apartment in a military town, which had long ceased to be a military man, on Sakhalin and move to the mainland. Despite the fact that the apartment has not been supplied with water at all for the last two years, despite the fact that people heated their homes with stoves in the bitter cold, the bailiff service found the reserve lieutenant colonel and handed him a subpoena. The summons indicated that the retired military man was being summoned to court, because the debt for utilities for that very apartment on Sakhalin was more than 100 thousand rubles. In this case, even the word "indignation" for such cynicism will be somewhat weak.
There are other examples when people living in abandoned military towns suffer from bureaucratic lawlessness. So, in one of the districts of the Perm region, about 30 families of retired military personnel were forced to pay that their houses, allegedly, would be completely repaired. People who have forgotten what hot water and central heating are, were delighted even with such repairs, when the main share will be made up of their funds. The renovation was never started. And the company, which supposedly had to re-equip an apartment building, install new communications, simply changed its name and stated that there had been changes in its management, and that a new contract had to be concluded and paid again. There was no limit to the indignation of the defrauded tenants, but by an amazing coincidence, there was no reaction either from the local administration or from the law enforcement agencies. Only direct intervention from Moscow after a letter was sent to the President allowed residents to get their money back.
So a saying pops up, the essence of which is - far from the king. Our local military officials are doing what allows them to fill their pockets. They simply do not care about the fate of thousands of people who were actually abandoned. Someone buys another penthouse not far from Moscow, and someone is destined for the fate of eternal wanderers in hostels and soldiers' barracks. It seems that the 21st century is already in the yard, but sometimes it seems that someone forgets about it. The promises of the authorities are forgotten, the work of people who have given all of themselves for the good of what is commonly called the Motherland is forgotten, but this cart is not going to move from its place under any circumstances.
So the new initiative to "resettle" people from the abandoned garrisons, as you can see, will not do any good.
