‘Living here is impossible’ Across Russia, people who ask officials for help with flooded roads and housing problems face retribution instead
Across Russia, ordinary people who dare to complain about flooded roads, housing issues, or toxic air often face retribution from the authorities. When residents post videos pleading for help, in many cases the response from officials is not solutions but threats, fines, and even criminal charges. RFE/RL’s Sever.Realii spoke with people on the ground to better understand how authorities are retaliating against those who speak out. Meduza shares an abridged English-language version of their reporting.
Back in July, residents of the Kyrinsky District in Russia’s Zabaykalsky Krai posted a video showing roads washed out by rain, so deep with mud that even ambulances were getting stuck. Local officials dismissed the footage as “staged” and threatened the person who filmed it with criminal charges.
“All the villages in our district have been cut off from the outside world since the summer — the roads were washed away by rain,” said Sergey (name changed) from the village of Altan. “Kids walk 20 kilometers [over 12 miles] on foot. Ambulances get stuck, fire trucks too.”
In July, residents of three villages — Altan, Shumunda, and Bukukun — reached their breaking point. They filmed another video of the mud and posted it online.
“We hoped people in other villages facing the same road problems would see it, like it, share it — that someone would finally listen, at least answer our letters,” Sergey said. “Because living here is impossible. How can you raise children like this? How can the elderly survive if even doctors can’t reach us?”
The authorities did take notice. But instead of sending help, they filed a police report accusing the residents of spreading a “fake video.”
“That was my relative knee-deep in mud filming that video. It’s not fake!” said Irina (name changed). “You know what they wrote in their report? That it was all a setup. A setup by who? The 400 people who live in our village?”
‘They’re the ones insulting us’
For years, residents of Podlesnoye, a community in the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug town of Pyt-Yakh, have been fighting to keep their homes. The town’s former mayor, Dmitry Gorbunov, had promised to officially register their land plots and houses, which were first built as temporary housing, even though they live there year-round. But after a new mayor took office, those promises were scrapped. When residents recorded a video appeal to Putin, the response wasn’t help — it was threats of criminal charges for allegedly “insulting a public official.”
“After years of our petitions, Gorbunov promised that each of us would finally get our own plot — they’d map the land, and we’d be able to register our houses as permanent residences,” said Lyudmila (name changed). “But now it turns out the land survey project was never approved, and the new authorities refuse to recognize our community at all.”
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According to residents, last year local officials tried to drive them out by cutting off their water and heat before winter.
“We started burning whatever we could to stay warm. There were terrible fires here,” Lyudmila recalled.
Apparently the authorities want to sell off our land for profit, and they’re threatening to bring in bulldozers and go straight through our yards and houses! What kind of fascism is this? Of course we were outraged and turned to the president! And now they’re threatening us with criminal charges just for calling things what they are!
The video where residents called the bulldozer threats “fascism” has since disappeared from the Internet. “Supposedly we insulted the city administration by calling their threats to drive a bulldozer over us fascist,” Lyudmila said. “They made us sign a warning: if we gather to record another video appeal, it’ll be treated as an unauthorized rally. But it’s they who are insulting us, not the other way around.”
The residents of Podlesnoye never received a reply from the presidential administration. What they did get was another reminder from Pyt-Yakh officials that they could move into other housing.
A recurring theme
Stories about Russians being punished for filing complaints with officials appear in the news regularly. On May 23, 2025, Anastasia Sholokhova from Bratsk, a city in Russia’s Irkutsk region, was fined 35,000 rubles (about $430) by a local court for allegedly “discrediting the Russian army.” Her offense: appearing in a video with about 20 neighbors from a dilapidated apartment block, giving officials — including Putin — a tour of their “house of horrors.”
The video is 17 minutes long. But investigators from Bratsk’s Interior Ministry focused on only a few seconds, when Sholokhova’s voice is heard off-camera saying:
Well, there’s what NATO envies us for. This is why NATO’s coming after us. You’re off somewhere marching around foreign lands, protecting someone — but who’s going to protect us? You’re sitting there in your finery. […] I’ll go film what it is NATO supposedly envies.
In April, residents of Frolovo, a town in Russia’s Volgograd region, recorded their own appeal to Putin and Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin. Speaking against a backdrop of thick black smoke billowing from a steel plant, 76-year-old retiree Yanosh Malinovsky described how locals have lived for decades in toxic air so bad that they can’t open their windows even at night, and every bench is coated in soot.
In response, the mayor, Vasily Dankov, filed a police report accusing him of organizing an “unauthorized protest.” Later, Dankov confirmed on his Telegram channel that the plant did indeed have “environmental problems,” but stressed that it was a “city-forming enterprise.” Police soon contacted Malinovsky, and investigators “strongly urged” him not to discuss the case publicly or share screenshots of the personal threats he received from the mayor and the head of Frolovo’s city council.
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