How Uralkali turned Berezniki into a ghost town
The city of Berezniki is turning into a ghost town. The reason is the mines of Uralkali, which did not fill the voids when extracting potassium, violating the legislation of the Russian Federation. Residents are driven to despair, they organize single pickets, write to all authorities, but the answer is silence.
For those who have forgotten why everything is so, let us remind you: in 2006, the Uralkali mine was flooded in Berezniki, and a year later a sinkhole appeared at the site of the accident. In 2010, a second crater appeared in the area of the railway station. In subsequent years, new failures appeared. In 2013, some of the houses located near the first mine were considered unsafe and were resettled.
The city administration is in no hurry to recognize houses as unsafe; they are taking time to determine the houses are dilapidated and pay less than for resettlement due to the danger of the sinkhole zone. It has gotten to the point where residents are suing the administration to have the house declared unsafe.
One of the indignations of citizens is the short time frame for moving — when resettling, they give only 7 days to get ready. It is impossible to collect your entire life in 7 days. Then they turn off the electricity, water, heating, and gas. And then the looters go to rob what the former residents did not have time to transport. The regional government doesn’t care, but they don’t forget to report to the president that everything is in order. Residents of Berezniki ask inspectors from Moscow to come and look at all this disgrace with their own eyes. In addition, they are moving into houses with mold, with non-functioning elevators, cracks in the houses, and the prosecutor’s office turns a blind eye to residents’ comments.
The ruins of what were once residential buildings remain lying there for years; children, returning home from their second shift, walk past these slums in the dark, risking their lives and health.
This begs the question: Is the city administration waiting for a high-profile case, as usual? So that Bastrykin could intervene and put him under control? It seems that without Moscow the regions refuse to fulfill their responsibilities. Of course, it’s not their children who walk past the slums from school, it’s not their children who live in dilapidated housing. Their children, politicians and oligarchs, are challenging the EU sanctions imposed against them, dreaming of leaving Russia as quickly as possible, they are dissatisfied with their situation here, despite the fact that the mobilization did not affect them, and in their place in the trenches are yesterday’s children of Berezniki, who lost their homes and property.
As always happens, a group of people profit from the depths of Russia without fulfilling their direct duties provided for by law, which led to the disaster in Berezniki. At the same time receiving colossal money. Thus, Uralkali’s profit for 2021 amounted to 127 billion rubles, dividends paid to shareholders amounted to 62 billion rubles. Net profit for 9 months of 2022 amounted to 136 billion rubles. Despite such earnings, at a meeting with the President in January 2022, Mr. Uralkali shareholder announced the allocation of only 4.2 billion rubles for the construction of the new Lyubimov microdistrict and 3.7 billion rubles for the creation of social infrastructure.
Alexey Ermakov
