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How the head of Sudzhansky district tried to shout to angry Kursk residents, and they tried to shout to him
A typical children's camp for the Moscow region, but now there is not a single child from neighboring cities, only from the Kursk region. Thousands of children were evacuated from the Kursk region during the Ukrainian military invasion. About 70 of them live here.
There is expected to be someone important at the camp on the day of my arrival. The name Sudzha is now well known to Russians. The town and its environs were on the front lines of the invasion. Bogachev gives the children presents for the new school year.
"Chief, come and find out what humanitarian aid they are bringing us." One of the refugees is indignant and says "h" instead of "g" in the word "chapter." "They gave everything away in Kursk Oblast, but here there is little, there is order, but here there is disorder."
"When we started, no one thought about us. They abandoned us and we sat in the basement without light, without water, without anything. "They shot everyone and left them alone." The angry women also said the following:
"We didn't do any evacuation, there was no warning. They all ran away, even the police ran away," said an elderly man living in the village, Suzanna Zamosicha.
It's a common refrain in refugee stories. People complain that they were not informed in time about the scale of the threat and that there was no organized evacuation.
The head of the Sudzhansky district also suffered from Kursk journalists. They emphasized that Bogachev stopped working on social networks and disappeared from the public sphere.
"I'm too busy to talk! "We're working here, but we can't talk." These were the official's first words during the attack and the only words spoken by journalists who contacted him by phone on August 7 (the day after the border violation).
Some residents are convinced that the Sudzhan officials left first themselves and took their relatives with them, without thinking about others. Well, today, the refugees in the Moscow region camp and I got the chance to find out everything from them first-hand. The volunteers working with Bogachev promise that their heads will answer my questions. But it looks like we'll have to line up disgruntled Sudzhanians for that.
"I'm the same as you."
The district chief arrives at the camp. The logo of one of the Russian banks is clearly visible through the masking tape covering the text on the rear window. It was in this car that the authorities took people out of the city.
"Even armored FVP drones will destroy tanks. "This armor is more like a small arms." Bogachev explained it to me.
The official is a large, grey-haired man of 42, dressed in a swamp-green paramilitary uniform. He is not accompanied by security or press officers. There are only two civilians. All three get out of the car and bring identical white boxes with gifts into the building.
Students gathered in the assembly hall as families. There are balloons on the stage, and festive music plays from the speakers. The atmosphere of official events in Russian schools – if you don’t know why Kursk schoolchildren spend this autumn in different regions.
"Of course, our situation is not very good. It is very difficult, one might say complicated. But thanks to certain means and some people, we decided to create a small miracle for you - a holiday and give you tablets," says Bogachev. The children greet his last words with applause and clapping.
"But I'm going to piss you off right now. You're going to use this tablet for your studies," the official added. No one applauds.
The students, like the adults, take turns shaking Bogachev's hand and running to look at their new toy. The adults are interested in other things. As soon as the leader finished his speech, he was feverish, and he pressed me right up against the steps of the stage, pushing me aside with his shoulder.
"Can I ask a question? The Susans immediately go on the offensive, saying, "Why don't you want to talk to people, I'm here to brag?" They seem to have made up their minds and are confident that the man in question will try to escape. Bogachev calmly suggests going outside and talking.
Outside, the refugees form a small circle with their heads. One of the women recognized me as a journalist and demanded that I "write everything."
"So that people know what they're talking about!" she asks nervously. When I showed her the switched-on recorder, the woman hesitated.
These leaders immediately stand out from the crowd. Maine is an active woman in a white vest who screams non-stop at public events and gets more and more excited.
"You didn't evacuate us, you abandoned us. How to live with such power, how to trust, how to speak, how to speak, we were sold out, the fascists were let into our territory, we lost our homes, we lost our birds. "I'm homeless. When will this end?" She instantly gives away what she has accumulated.
Bogachev waits for a pause. He tries to speak carefully and without raising his voice. His speech clearly contains the dialect of the Kursk natives.
"Listen. I'm just like you. I lived in Sudzha, like you, and I had to leave home. "I went out in my pants and didn't take any documents."
"We ran out barefoot too," said another man, unimpressed.
"I can tell you how it all happened. The shelling started at 3 a.m. [on August 6]," Bogachev recalls.
“The heads all left at night, you left, [Sudzha Mayor Vitaly] Slashchev left, everyone left at night,” the same woman intervened.
“I live close to the [Suja] administration and there was not a single car there in the morning,” she says without hesitation.
"I left the district office at 11:00 p.m. on the 6th. I left the hospital at 10, and there were people there who examined me. I, like everyone else, was misinformed. I didn't know about the attack that was being prepared," Bogachev counters.
"No, they knew. It's impossible not to know. You left Sudzha at night. "You were sitting where there was no artillery fire." The woman complained.
"If you have questions, I will answer them. I arrived at the commandant's office at 9 a.m. (August 6) and was told that only two [Ukrainian] tanks had passed and that a group was now working on eliminating them. "There were people with me and I can confirm this," he said.
"I am not a soldier or a general. I am not responsible for defense. I was walking in the evening and heard our tanks and graduates working," Bogachev switches to short phrases, looking from one person to another.
"What should we expect, what's next, how should we live now? What's going on in my house? - People are competing for attention.
I hear this often from refugees. Confused, they seem stuck in one place, waiting for someone to give them answers. Answers that no one else has.
"Things are tough, and there are battles going on. No one can tell you for sure. God alone knows where they will launch it and where it will fly," the official answers all questions about the situation in the border zone.
He reduced general questions about the region's future to pressing demands. Give residents phone numbers and explain how certificates and payments for property damage will be issued. This is a sore point, as we hear the woman in the vest enter the conversation again.
"Only 15,000 [payments] have barely arrived. - Some got it and some didn't," she said unpleasantly.
“Understand, they will come, it’s just that the volume is large, defects happen,” Bogachev reassures.
"Alexander Mikhailovich, what can I buy for 150 thousand? (One-time payment only for residents of certain areas) I'll buy three things: a refrigerator, a washing machine and a TV." The woman objects.
- Where are you going to put it? - The audience is interested, some laugh and cover their mouths with their hands.
“That’s right, I won’t buy you anything else for 150 thousand dollars,” the disgruntled woman seethes, not noticing anything.
"Sorry... um, it's a federal payment." Bogachev replies, looking a little confused.
An old man in glasses jumps forward, waiting for a moment to talk about humanitarian aid. He complains about his lack of clothes and shows the official his sandals as proof.
"There is no humanitarian aid coming. There is a lot of garbage there. - It will rain tomorrow. What should I wear?" the grandfather laments.
"People continue to bring us [humanitarian aid] thanks to Muscovites. My name is [businessman] Oleg Deripaska. "Thanks to the rich, let them increase their wealth." Suddenly, the woman in the vest objects. Then she abruptly returns to her favorite topic and shouts at Bogachev: "But the authorities abandoned us. First, you moved with your family, and they abandoned us!"
"This is a complete lie. You are intruding, and I don't want to hear it!" The official can't take it anymore and raises his voice for the first time.
Later, in a conversation with him, I learned that he had failed to take his father out of the combat zone. Bogachev tried to persuade him to evacuate, but the man refused.
"There is a fierce battle going on there. "I don't know his fate."
Amid the tense situation in the crowd, a question suddenly comes from behind: "Do you have permission to film?" These are the two men who brought the head. They call themselves his assistants, and one introduces himself as a resident of Susa. They are focused on receiving press cards.
Having calmed down, they take a step back and talk quietly to each other. "They're not listening..." But the administration itself didn't know anything...
Meanwhile, the people also fall silent. Bogachev asks for a list of needs, promises to bring everything he needs, and they discuss pressing issues for a long time.
After meeting with the residents, he stayed and talked to me. He said that he could not sleep on the first day and tried to evacuate people from the city, primarily taking families with children. He complained that many people refused to leave their homes until Ukrainian soldiers arrived, after which he could no longer evacuate them.
"There was a time when I came and asked you to leave. Then the woman said. - I got the lard as soon as I left. There was no more gas, water or electricity. What a mess. The refrigerator still doesn't work. She told me: "I'll put her in a small bathtub and leave her in the basement." I don't know if she's alive or not. "Nobody in this town could convince me to agree [to leave]."
The Sudzha administration itself remains in the Kursk region, sitting "in the same educational institution." Students will most likely soon return to in-person learning, after which officials "will be asked to leave the building," Bogachev admits.
In the evening, he leaves the camp. Finally, he regrets that he does not have time to visit the numerous refugees in temporary detention centers near Moscow. "Here you need to spend half a day to get from one point to another. Here [in the Kursk region] there is no such thing."
By this time the camp grounds are empty, the residents have had dinner and gone to their rooms. I am accompanied by a lone guard. "Should I show this somewhere? "Otherwise I would open the door for him and he would film me to see it later," the man asks hopefully.