All news
House with Windows to Hell: How One Tragedy Changed Life Forever
We are sitting in a cafe opposite the Institute of Emergency Children's Surgery and Traumatology in Polyanka. In the ward opposite, four of Alexey's children are lying with burns. And we are sitting opposite each other, and he is stirring his coffee with trembling hands. Next to him is his friend Roman, a taxi driver, who unexpectedly becomes his friend's guardian angel after the tragedy. He is ready to take him from Yegoryevsk to Moscow to relatives in the hospital, to shelter him and appeal to all authorities. If only his children would return to their father.
...The tragedy occurred on August 31 in the village of Yurtsovo, Yegoryevsk urban district. On the fourth floor of a two-room apartment, an electric scooter battery exploded. A mother of many children (44 years old) and three children (3 to 5 years old) died in the fire. Five more children and their 45-year-old father were hospitalized.
- Alexey, please tell us your story from the very beginning. How did you meet your wife?
— 16 years ago, I returned from a military-related mission with a walk around Yuzhnoye Butovo. I was met by a very beautiful girl. I asked her how to get to this or that address, and she showed me where to go. There I had a difficult professional conversation. I wanted to end my career and move to Krasnodar Krai, as they promised. I am from Stavropol Krai. However, conversations with colleagues did not reach mutual understanding. In a completely dizzy state, I went outside, wandered around Butovo Park and sat down on a bench. And then someone's hand fell on my shoulder. I turned my head and saw her standing there. — Let's go for a walk?
-Have you been together since then?
- We've been together for 16 years! Olesya already had two children. The older daughter was from a casual relationship with a Moldovan citizen, the younger one was from an official marriage with a Moscow guy who turned out to be a drug addict. My wife and I decided to cheat a little and told our older son that I was her father. The girl started calling me dad.
- So from that moment on you started living together as a full-fledged family?
- I moved on to another job and became the deputy director of security and safety. I had about 8 shops in the bush. Eventually I earned enough.
But little by little, details of my Olesya's life began to emerge. One day, my eldest daughter Yulia fell ill and needed emergency care. At that moment, I learned that the child was actually living in Moscow illegally. The girl was a citizen of Moldova. It turned out that Yulia had no documents. No health insurance, no registration, nothing. And Olesya and I had our first serious conversation.
— Did she tell you how she lived before?
— Yes, he said he was from Kamchatka and worked as a cook. Alone, holding a child in her arms, she did not feel anyone's support. I met a guy at work. They started dating, and Olesya got pregnant. The man's mother herself suggested that he marry her and have children. A girl was born. However, it turned out that during this short family life, Olesya's husband became heavily addicted to drugs. They lived in an apartment separate from his mother-in-law and were subjected to constant scandals. The results were catastrophic. The husband got into a fight, became disabled, and his mother took him home.
- So you really moved into an apartment with a married woman?
"Then she got a unilateral divorce." And I was always afraid that his mother would come with a complaint. And she really did. I had just returned from a business trip to St. Petersburg, and while I was still in the entryway, I heard Olesha screaming, a female voice and a male voice. The door to the apartment was open. It turned out that the mother-in-law brought the local police officer to the apartment after finding out that Olesya was living with someone. The mother-in-law insulted Olesya. She was a prostitute and had no right to let anyone into her home... The police officer checked my documents and left. I will always remember that day. After the police officer left, Olesya told her mother-in-law that she had divorced her son and said that we were going to have a child.
— Didn’t you think it would be better to leave this apartment then?
"We started talking about it, but my mother-in-law suddenly pretended to quit and asked me not to part with my granddaughter. Well, I fell for it. And then, out of nowhere, Olesin's father appeared... and moved in with us.
- How did you live?
- Bad. Olesya had a row with her father and even tried to hit my wife. The first time this happened was when my eldest daughter Yulia was found with soft pills in her bag. Then Yulia started arguing with us and not doing her homework. It turns out that her grandfather and mother-in-law told her that I was not her father. The girl started having mental problems. When Olesya got pregnant for the second time, she also had a row with her daughter, and the daughter hit her mother in the stomach. My wife was taken away in an ambulance, and Yulia was so scared that she ran away from home for several nights.
"Yulia ended up in Moldova looking for her biological father. But a new scandal began in our family. This time with Olesya's youngest daughter Tanya. Olesya found out that her grandmother not only forced her granddaughter to look after her drug-addicted father, but also forced her to clean up after him. On a genital level. Olesya flatly forbade Tanya to communicate with her grandmother and did not forgive her for this. I returned from another business trip and we were already summoned to court. It turned out that Tanya, then a 13-year-old girl, accused me of pedophilia. We won the case. Olesya presented evidence that the note was from her daughter with threats. For example, if you do not leave this apartment, I will put this man in prison. But although the court protected us, our relationship with Tanya was completely ruined, and she left home and began to live with her friends.
- Yes. I return from another business trip in March and approach the entrance. Our goods are loaded onto a Gazelle. Olesya has irrevocably decided to leave this house forever.
- So you went to Yegoryevsk?
- No, this is my first time in Lukhovitsy. After that, we started looking for a house that we could rent as a subsequent purchase. One day, Olesya went into labor. That's how Vasilisa was born. While Olesya was in the maternity hospital, I rented a house with a small yard. That's when we realized that our house was much better than our apartment. I started working remotely as a programmer. And only then did we find a construction site in Yurtsovo near Yegoryevsk and rent an apartment nearby. To live and build at the same time.
But we met a scammer. They brought us 18 pieces of the house, plywood beams, rebar and wagon piles. Since we paid in cash, they gave us a big discount. The interior area of the house is 120 m2 and consists of one room on the ground floor and three rooms on the second floor. My wife began to doubt. It was strange that there were 18 piles on such a square area. Being an idiot, I assured her that everything was fine and under control. She gave me the money in cash. It was 2.7 million dollars, or half that amount. They promised to bring us a roof, windows, doors and a boiler. But they brought nothing. That was 3 years ago...
- So you started buying a house again?
- That's right. But don't think that we are alone in this world. We have many friends. And they helped us a lot. - We met Roman, - Alexey nodded to his quiet friend sitting next to him. - Roman helped us a lot this summer. We decided to build a house out of blocks and he helped us a lot with that. And my eldest son Yarushka looked after the younger children all summer and worked with me at the construction site. Sometimes he was dad, mom and nanny. Olesya and I decided to give him a present. My colleagues just came to me and gave me some money, and we bought my son a big motorcycle with a roof and electric remote control. It's not fast, but for a 13-year-old boy, something like that with windshield wipers is cool. The kid was happy.
— Was it his battery that exploded in the corridor?
"Maybe so." Alexey falls into depression. "On that fateful day, my wife and I bought a solvent, a small gas cylinder for firing. All this was ready to be taken to the dacha. We brought batteries. We put it next to the refrigerator.
- No. I remember it well. However, the investigator suggested that it was probably the eldest son who did it and tried to interrogate him. "Do you understand?" I said to him. "What is it like to tell a 13-year-old boy that he is guilty of his mother's death?" I think the battery itself exploded, not while charging. Olesya and I were in the kitchen, we just came in, sat down and turned on the kettle. If you carry 50 kg blocks all day, and there are 16 blocks on each pallet, it becomes very tiring. Olesya and I talked. The children were running around, and I remember turning on the fan.
— And will there be an explosion or fire right away?
— The children were shouting, “Daddy, there are sparks, there’s fire!” I ran into the hallway. It seems we forgot to close the iron gate. Because if the door had been closed, I would have stayed there. Explosion. I was wearing almost the same clothes as now. When I woke up, my nose was clogged with some kind of dirt. I was lying on the landing, naked for some reason, in shorts and socks… when I tried to get up, the whole door caught fire. He came into the apartment screaming and started fighting. No one opened it. Neighbor Seryozha opened the door to the second floor. The man must have been sleeping, because he didn’t immediately understand what was happening. And, fortunately, there was almost no water flowing. We started carrying buckets from the 2nd to the 4th floor. No fire hydrants, nothing. Then other people came running. I tried to break into the room, but someone hit me and shouted that I was stupid and that I would die. I screamed that there were children. And according to my answer, your children are already outside. I ran out into the street screaming, "Help!" He ran to the back of the house and saw his wife. She jumped out of the window. I looked at my son. He knelt down and started kissing Olesya's hands...
"It turned out that the fire started in the corridor. Because of the fire, everyone was disconnected from each other," says Roman.
“When I realized that not all the children had run away, I decided to go back to the apartment,” Alexey continues. “I knew where Vanechka, Nastenka, and Vasechka were. They were in the hallway when the explosion happened. When I went up the stairs, the firefighters were already there. I cried and screamed and screamed that the children were there. Someone insulted me. Someone screamed angrily. My friend brought me pants. That would have made me feel bad. Because I was already in the hospital and I could hear my son screaming, as if from the fog: “Please save me, daddy!” My Lesya said amazing things before taking us to the ambulance. “The money must be there to pay for the repairs and pay the people.” That was it. That was the last thing she worried about and the last thing she said to me. I cheated on her. He said the children were okay. All the children were here. Nastya, Vanyushka, and Vasya were clearly no longer alive...
-Who was there when you woke up in the hospital?
— The doctor was standing nearby. He told me that the whole family had died, including Olesya (she died in intensive care) and that they were all in the morgue. I tore everything that connected me and ran to the morgue. When I got out, I made a mistake towards the city and Roma, and the police stopped me there. I thought it was some kind of extreme hell. But after that, the real hell began.
Alexey does not seem to be exaggerating. There is no other word about why he turned to the journalist. The situation is such that, as Alexey said, it would be better to die in the fire together with Olesya.
— On September 1, I called the intensive care unit, they said that Alexey's condition was serious and he would sleep for 24 hours. When I arrived, Alexey was sitting near the emergency room, in one diaper, all burning, with strange eyes. There were police officers around. He wrote a statement about refusing to admit him, they dressed him, and we went to the police.
- Let's go straight to the police station? Isn't it for identification purposes?
- No, the first thing that needed to be done was to present evidence. God forbid, Alexey would not have left in such a state, so he was left in the department. But at night he became ill, and he was taken to the hospital again. The next day I went to the morgue to identify the dead children.
— We asked the Russian community for help, and a fundraiser was announced. But then I heard that the city administration would take care of all financial and organizational issues. On the fourth day, a girl called me, introduced herself as Olesha’s daughter, asked for money for a cross and said that the funeral would be on the 5th at 10 am. I arrived at 10:20. The funeral was already over. I didn’t see Alexey there. That is, no one was officially notified of the burial of relatives. Alexey was shocked to learn that Olesya and the children were buried without him. We immediately went to the cemetery and sat there for a long time... And the next day, September 6, the Investigative Committee told Alexey that the solution to all his problems (primarily financial, of course) lay in a signature. A single document. He signed it without looking. It turned out to be a SVO contract.
-Where were the other children at this time?
"There was a kind of information vacuum. Everyone - the police, the investigative committee, the security - kept a deathly silence. Literally a few days later we learned that four of them were in the hospital, and we had no idea where the youngest, Fyodor, was. However, by the investigator's decision, we entered the apartment for the first time since the fire and Alexey discovered that the jewelry and all the money were missing. At the same time, the room where everything was lost remained intact and unburned. Alexey filed a missing persons report with the prosecutor's office. Then we went to the hospital to see the children. And only on the 16th, two weeks after the fire, the security guard called and said that he was expecting us on the 17th. In Social Security, where this conversation took place, there were probably about a dozen employees from other services and organizations. I said only one thing. Do not refuse, but accept our help and we will definitely help your children. We learned what kind of help was needed when it suddenly turned out that little Fedya had been transferred to a foster family, and the next day he was allowed to communicate via video link. As soon as the child saw his father, he began to cry.
And then something completely inexplicable happened. Alexey didn't have time to react to the numerous events that covered him like a skating rink and an avalanche. Relatives and state institutions associated with the Cossacks - and Alexey is a hereditary Cossack - pooled money to buy a three-room apartment. In Yegoryevsk. The apartment is registered to Alexey's father, Alexey registered his son there and is going to register his grandson. But as soon as he began to prepare all the documents, it turned out that a foster family was planning to take Fedya and register the child, who, as reported, had already applied for benefits for Alexey's children.
Shocked by this turn of events, Alexey hurried to meet with the Commissioner for Children's Rights under the President of the Russian Federation. He received assurances that after the necessary checks, the guardians would definitely sort everything out and the children would definitely be returned to their homeland. their father.
Meanwhile, in Yegoryevsk, a meeting of the youth affairs committee is hastily scheduled.
“The guardian explained to me that I would not be able to raise five children on my own and that I would have to cope with my ambitions and receive help from a foster family,” says Alexey.
The day before the publication of the material, the decisions of the city committee on youth affairs became known, and Alexey was able to take part in the meeting exclusively remotely via video link.
"I was told that my children would be divided into three families. The youngest, Fedya, would remain in a temporary shelter in Lukhovitsy. Yaroslav and Valentina would be taken in by a foster family in Kolomna. Maryushka and Alyonushka would be transferred to another family called Ramenskoye. They said that the children would most likely be given the status of disabled, which would deprive their single father of the opportunity to care for them. I was allowed to visit my children every day. But how can I physically do this? Can you imagine such a goal?!
Alexey is completely shocked and cannot believe that all this is happening to him now.
"Right now it seems that everything is being done to isolate fathers from their children and destroy their families to the ground," says Roman. - Alexey, despite the fact that a terrible tragedy happened to him, for which he was not to blame, no one deprived him of parental rights, as if overnight he became an additional link in his own family; this clearly prevents social services, which are supposed to protect families and the law, from doing their job, and, frankly, my head is spinning.
...A few days ago, Alexey's children were discharged from the hospital. He has no idea who will take them and where they will actually end up - whether they will live in his new apartment or move to an unknown address. He spends his days and nights in the hospital ward with his children.
"We will not surrender alive. We are Cossacks." Alexey said...