Press Release, 18.03.2019

According to Emilia Slabunova, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who announced the Decade of Childhood in Russia, must personally visit the village of Tomsino in Sebezhsky District, the Pskov Region, where fellow villagers harassed and mobbed Tanya Perchikova, 12-year-old girl who wrote a letter to Russian President asking for help. Moreover, the head of the Sebezhsky district, Leonid Kursenkov, said that the Perchikov family is not the only one who is experiencing similar difficulties: “We have around 19,000 people in the area, of which such families are almost all in the same condition.”

In mid-December 2018, 12-year-old Tasia Perchikova from the village of Tomsino, the Pskov Region, wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin. The girl complained about various difficulties – the only school in the village was closed, her mother worked as a nurse in two shifts for a small salary – and asked the President to help.

There was no response from Vladimir Putin, and local officials refused to help. After a publication about the Perchikovs was released on the Radio Liberty website, the family began to receive small donations from people across the country. At the same time, the Perchikovs began facing problems in counteraction with their fellow villagers, many of whom also experienced financial difficulties, but did not receive any help.

The Chairperson of the Yabloko party emphasises that poverty has a large list of extremely negative social consequences, while the authorities have neither a strategy nor political will to overcome it, and life with a tight belt is offered as a model of a decent life and patriotic behaviour.

“Facing situations like the one that happened in the Pskov region, you see how poverty benefits the current government. It allows to redirect the aggression of people towards each other, control the situation via play one off against another, distracting attention from the true culprits of such a situation. The most vulnerable – children – become victims,” Emilia Slabunova says.

In November 2018, a 14-year-old schoolgirl hanged herself in Safonovo, the Smolensk region, who had previously complained https://snob.ru/entry/168534 to the President about the dire straits of the family and the low salary of her mother, a cleaner at a local hospital.

Emilia Slabunova notes that the Yabloko party has a programme for overcoming poverty.