The city of Rubtsovsk, where the Russian military tried to send 130 parcels of stolen items from Ukrainian homes, is located on the outskirts of one of Russia’s poorest regions.

Only employees of the colonies, the FSB, and the military themselves earn well. The BBC learned from the residents of Rubtsovsk how their city lived during the war.

Rubtsovsk is a small town in the southern part of the Altai Territory, 40 km from the border with Kazakhstan. The capital of the Barnaul region is almost 300 km away.

Rubtsovsk’s prosperity, like that of many industrial cities, ended in the 1990s with the closure of the city’s main plant.

In 1942, it was created on the basis of tractor factories evacuated from Kharkiv, Odessa and Stalingrad. By 2010, all this remained in ruins.

A year ago, they became an architectural symbol of the city.

31-year-old resident of Rubtsovsk Andrew (name changed at the request of the hero) sends the BBC video with a wasteland on the main street. He says that the famous “House under the spire” used to stand here.

For seventy years, people went to this house on excursions, it was depicted on postcards. But the power was not spent on repairing the house, and in 2021 it fell.

It was not restored and demolished. City Hall promised to break up the square on the site of the wasteland.

The facade of the Stalin house, five hundred meters from it, on the main city square of Lenin, is covered with fat patches of putty.

In April, two black banners were hung on them. The right reminded Rubtsovska of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the letter “Z” and the phrase “SvoihNeBrosayem”. On the left – “patriotic” V and a quote from the character of the movie “Brother-2” Danilo Bagrov: “Strength”.

20 days before the Victory Day celebrations, they were replaced by advertisements for low-priced Svitlofor stores.

“Money decides everything. A good place in the city center, no one will just give it to the administration for some letters, so the money won. The advertiser came and hung his posters,” – says Andrew.

There are four traffic lights in Rubtsovsk, which are popularly called “poor markets”. There are no counters in the trading halls, in fact these are large warehouses where the product lies in cardboard boxes or refrigerators. According to locals, there are always queues at the box office.

Andrew was born and lives all his life in Rubtsovsk. He served in the army as a conscript, and now earns in the Ministry of Emergencies about 40 thousand rubles (about 16.5 thousand UAH) per month. In recent years, he says, the main enterprises here are not factories, but the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSVP), customs and border control.

The first Rubtsov colony – VK-5 of the general regime for “first-timers” – was opened after the Great Patriotic War, when the Kharkiv Tractor Plant was moved to the city. Prisoners were ordered to build buildings for him, and then most of Rubtsovsk. The notorious military unit №6720, which is fighting in Ukraine, was created in the 1950s to protect the colonies.

There are still many prisoners in Rubtsovsk: the four penal colonies (VCs) located in the north of the city can hold almost 6,000 people at a time.

Russian opposition leader Ildar Dadin left one of the local colonies in 2017, while another vice-governor of the Altai Krai and vice-governor of his capital Barnaul are serving their terms in another.

Colonies is the most stable and time-tested employer in Rubtsovsk. There are dozens of vacancies in VK on job search sites. In most cases, “security inspectors” are invited. Requirements include secondary education, military service and the ability to “adhere to subordination”.

“Half the city is working, half is sitting. It’s a joke,” said 33-year-old medical masseur Dmytro from Rubtsovsk, who calls the work at the FSVP prestigious. But because of the “social buns” there are more people than places.

Dmytro recalls a friend who worked in the colony: “My salary is three times higher than mine, and I have a preferential length of service. He will retire soon and will be able to live on it.”

Avito offers about 350 vacancies in Rubtsovsk, hh.ru – about 250 vacancies, about the same – and the local employment center. Everything where the salary is higher than one hundred thousand rubles, only for shift workers: “60/30, living in a comfortable car.”

For the rest you can earn from 15 to 40 thousand rubles (6-16.5 thousand UAH), if you’re lucky. Exceptions are vacancies for doctors (surgeons are promised up to 80,000 rubles (about 30,000 hryvnias)), slaughterers (up to 60,000 rubles) (up to 24,500 hryvnias) and the military.

The 6720 military unit needs 40 gunners right now. Salary – up to 25 thousand rubles (10.2 thousand UAH), plus social benefits. There are many vacancies in the local FSB: 15 positions with a salary of up to 60 thousand (24.5 thousand UAH), the candidate only needs to finish school and serve.

“If the salary is less than the minimum wage (minimum wage – BBC) – not a problem for the applicant, we can say that there is work. Find in the employment center salary above 15 thousand (6 thousand UAH) – good luck,” – says Anwar (name changed), who moved to Rubtsovsk from Uzbekistan under a resettlement program.

By the time he was 24, he had managed to work in a cafe in Uzbek cuisine – “as if he was not driving” – and several times went on duty as a car mechanic.

“There are a lot of robots, they just don’t want to work,” disagrees Serhiy Levychev, an entrepreneur from Rubtsy.

As a schoolboy he sold Chinese goods in the Rubtsov market, as a student he forged in accounting. At the age of 21 he had an accident and lost his leg – “wild pain – could not sleep.”

He was cured, got a prosthesis and went into business. Now Levychev has a popular newspaper in Rubtsovsk, a cable channel, a driving school and a bakery.

All of Levichev’s businesses lack staff. “We constantly need people, from a janitor to an engineer. And salaries are normal, from 30 thousand. Or a janitor – there you need half an hour to pick up garbage, sweep a little. But offer 10 thousand – offended, will not go.”

People in Rubtsovsk, according to the businessman, “somehow got used to whining” – “either snobbery or provincial helplessness.”

For almost 150 thousand inhabitants of Rubtsovsk – two cinemas, “Rainbow” and “Pearl”. In the last one, Balabanov’s films “Brother” and “Brother-2” have been shown for two weeks since the end of March. The city has several shopping malls, barbecues and dozens of pubs.

Popular kiosks with contraband alcohol and cigarettes from Kazakhstan, their prices are twice lower than in stores. According to the citizens, they are being taken to Rubtsovsk “with the permission and under the supervision of border guards.”

Garbage is seldom taken out, roads are in potholes. In early April, part of the wall in a residential building collapsed, and in the building where the police department was located, a toilet fell into the basement.

In the spring Rubtsovsk is enveloped in smoke from burnt grass, in other months – smog from emissions from local CHP. In 2016, the Siberian Generating Company (SGK) began to improve the heat supply of Rubtsovsk, with its arrival, the tariff for heat supply increased by 25%.

In conversations about SGK, rescuer Andriy mentions the owner of the company: “Billionaire Melnychenko, did you hear? The owner of a 143-meter yacht, worth 530 million euros, was arrested in Italy in March after the war.”

Several vape shops and the SDEK delivery service office are operating in the pits-covered central streets.

According to journalists, only three have reached the city. Others were stuck at the Belarusian SDEK checkpoint, where the military was trying to send things.

The effects of Western sanctions are already being felt in the city where they went to war. Prices for everything have risen. Masseur Dmitry before the war “lived well” for 300 rubles a day – “sausage, loaf, once a week a trip to the bath with friends.” The question of how much it has become more expensive is hopelessly dismissed.

According to Andriy from the Ministry of Emergencies, diapers cost 1,300 rubles instead of 900 rubles, car oil and filters have doubled in price.

In his free time as a lifeguard, Andrew made gift knives from expensive materials – mammoth bones, ebony, African steel – and sold in Russia and abroad.

Now the hobby, which brought additional income, is in question. Materials became more expensive, and PayPal, through which Andrew received payment from abroad, left Russia. “It was possible to earn 10,000 a month clean, without straining at all,” the rescuer complains.

There are many soldiers among Andriy’s friends. He recalls seeing news of the looting, but does not know any of the military, and calls them “hungry.”

Thirteen parcels with Ukrainian items tracked by the media have already been confiscated, particularly in Rubtsovsk.

Ten more are waiting for recipients in Russia’s SDEK offices. 46 out of 69 parcels with things from Ukraine have been returned, Vazhnye istorii writes (the Russian authorities consider it an undesirable organization).

In Rubtsovsk, there are rumors that soldiers were forbidden to send things, and the military prosecutor’s office dealt with the incident, which was caught on video.

“Not all officers are bastards. There are those for whom honor and dignity are also important,” says Andriy.

He himself would not want to be in the war: “War is savagery. This is the worst thing that can happen in the world. The consequences will be very long and very painful. For those who participated and who did not participate in all this.”

If I were somewhere in Moscow, Peter, I could get a lot of money. I come at 8 am and work until night every day, without weekends. Do you think I earn a lot? No! A maximum of 30-40 thousand a month. here I am fighting like a fish on ice. The city has no prospects, normal jobs and a decent salary, “said city activist Olesya Dilareva.

Dilareva started working as a journalist for a local radio company at the age of 16, then created her own photo and video production with her husband and colleagues.

Then she opened several stores in Rubtsovsk with goods for the holidays. The trade in crackers and candles lasted for 10 years, but last year the shops had to close.

The reason, according to Dilareva, was her telegram channel, Vkontakte page and Instagram page “Bloggersha Rubtsovsk”. For the second year in a row, she has been exposing officials for bad roads, untimely garbage collection, poor landscaping and corruption.

Every day Dilareva scolds local authorities. Officials did not like it, the woman suggests.

Dilareva also reports on patriotic flash mobs on social networks, publishes photos with the Z symbol and calls the war a “special operation.”

She says she would not like a report on Rubtsovsk to undermine the reputation of the Russian military. Many of her friends went to war.

“You don’t understand everything at all with looters … Absolutely. Nobody in Rubtsovsk got anything from there,” the activist said.

“When there is an armed conflict, it is the atrocities of the people. It can be rape, murder and looting,” said Vyacheslav Sadykov, a resident of Rubtsovsk and editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Golos Solidarnosti. I will not be surprised, because the city is poor. ”

The Altai Territory is truly one of the poorest regions in Russia. Almost 20% of the population lives below the poverty line, ie has an income of less than 11 thousand rubles a month. The average salary is 31,000 rubles ($ 400 at the prewar rate). Only about 10% of the region’s residents receive more than 45,000 rubles.

Sadykov, 66, is an individual entrepreneur and retiree. His pension is almost 15 thousand rubles. In response to the question of whether it is possible to live on such money, Sadykov laughs: “It is possible to exist, it is impossible to call it life.”

In the 1990s, he was the chief physician of the Rubtsovsk City Blood Transfusion Station, the largest manufacturer of hemophilia in Russia.

Due to gaps in the law, the station was liquidated in 2000. Sadykov fought for his business, in response to which two criminal cases were instituted – for theft on a particularly large scale and abuse of power.

He was threatened with 13 years in prison, as a result he was given five years probation and then amnestied.

Back in 2015, Sadykov described in his newspaper the problems of local health care. To get an appointment with a narrow specialist, the residents of Rubtsiv came to the clinic (there are four of them in the city for 150 thousand people) at two o’clock in the morning to take a queue for a ticket.

Problems still continue.

“We don’t even have district therapists in polyclinics left. You can count them on your fingers. Instead, they are paramedics. If you follow the law, this is a violation,” says Sadykov. By cunning standards – crazy money! ”

Residents of Rubtsovsk also have an unobvious source of income. From 1949 to 1989, almost 500 air, ground and underground nuclear explosions took place 400 km from Rubtsovsk at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan.

In 2016, there were 47,000 people in the Altai Krai who were directly exposed to radiation from nuclear tests, according to the local Ministry of Social Protection. They were provided with social support.

65-year-old Inna Popova (name changed, real name of the editorial office) received a high dose of radiation and would be happy to have compensation for her with a pension of 12,700 rubles, but could not finish the case.

“At first I found it funny, I thought the money was very small,” she says. “Then I realized that it was necessary, because the benefit for the apartment. “Then they lost my documents altogether.”

Popova says that when the Kharkiv Tractor Plant was evacuated to Rubtsovsk, Ukrainians and its workers moved with the equipment. The streets in the villages near Rubtsovsk were named after the places where the people who settled there came from: there was Voronezh, there was Kharkiv.

“My father spoke Surzhik. In the Altai, many people used to speak Surzhik. And here are these poppy seed rolls, Ukrainian cuisine, this Ukrainian softness, liveliness, friendly kindness. It was all before,” Popova recalls.

In the 1990s, Popova took shop tours from Rubtsovsk to China, and later for nine years worked as a proofreader for the RTV-3 Represents newspaper, published by the head of the local United Russia faction.

Popova is convinced that she is one of the few people in the city who does not watch TV and does not have credit. The Altai Territory has long been one of the five most credited Russian regions.

On average, one Altai has a bank debt of 278.4 thousand rubles. Those who have loans spend about 80% of their income on their repayment.

“You go into an apartment, there will be nothing, but the plasma will hang on the whole wall, and people watch TV around the clock,” says Popova. I buy her warm gloves, but she has plasma. She pays the loan for it. I wore plates for her son’s wedding, they weren’t at home. I come – but there is a giant plasma hanging, they borrowed it. ”

In the news that Rubtsovsk residents watch on TVs bought on credit, they talk about the need to bomb Ukraine and that the Russians are living worse because of the aggression of Western countries. Many locals are willing to believe this.

“I watched federal channels. Then I read one blogger – Ivan Okhlobystin. And it all happened. There’s a lot of truth,” says masseur Dmitry. Many around him hold a different view because of the prices and half-empty posters in the movies, but he himself “supports the special operation, because the Nazis screwed up.”

Rubtsovsk, say the interlocutors of the BBC – a city of systemic opposition, it has a strong nostalgic mood for the USSR, so in the last election to the State Duma in Rubtsovsk district won the Communist Maria Prusakova.

There are no independent youth organizations in the city, only pro-government ones. On March 18, the Rubtsovsk Children’s and Youth Center posted a music video “We don’t give up on our own” on YouTube.

For ten minutes, pensioners singing “Katyusha” in military suits are replaced by first-graders who make the state flag out of multicolored paper.

The next frame – people with the Russian flag in their hands lined up with the letter Z. Girls with the letter Z on white dresses. The girl draws the letter Z in the circle of the sun. Behind the scenes, the band Lube sings the song: “Come for life, be damned war.”

This year in Rubtsovsk the celebration of Victory Day will last for a week. The program will start on May 4 with the youth campaign “My Spring, My Victory!”

A concert “How good in a world without war!” Is planned in Kirov Park. A total of 40 events are planned.

Telling the BBC about the life of the city, rescuer Andrew stands on October Street, where, according to him, a few years ago cut down apple trees, birches, maples and poplars, when the pipes were shifted, and new trees were not planted.

He notes that there are many cars with military symbols in the city – the letters Z are pasted on expensive cars and Zhiguli.

“It’s clear that brainwashing is tough right now. The TV is working – and so far it’s beating the fridge,” Andriy said.

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