It is now difficult to establish how this story began. According to one version, one of the residents of Ust-Pita called the police department’s duty station in Yeniseisk and reported that the children of a not very prosperous family were “abandoned”; According to another, representatives of the minors’ commission turned to rescuers with a request to help them reach the same family that is registered. The fact is that now it is extremely difficult to get to Ust-Pit: navigation along the Yenisei is complete, but there is no winter road yet. One way or another, the police, together with rescuers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, arrived in the village on a hydrofoil. Upon arriving at the indicated address, the police found eight children aged between one and 15 in the house, as well as guests of her mother, who had gone somewhere. The guests were drunk and continued drinking alcohol.
Actually, the facts end there. Then the speculation begins. It is not entirely clear where it appeared in the news broadcast by the media that the children did not eat for several days and froze in an unheated house.
“This simply cannot happen,” is sure Nadezhda, a Yeniseisk resident who knows the family. -At home there were food products: the family had two cows, they recently killed a bull (by the way, his head went into the frame-note RG), they had a large garden-their own potatoes and vegetables, they probably also had pasta. And if the adults didn’t know how to cook and didn’t turn on the stove, who would believe it? In the village, children become independent early and there is also a large family here.
A close examination of police photographs makes it clear that many of the media’s assessments are unfounded. The house where a “dysfunctional” family lives has a well-equipped bathroom; Not all houses in the regional center can boast of such amenities. In the corner you can see an automatic washing machine, quite new, by the way. The floor is covered with linoleum, the furniture is intact, although cheap, and there are pretty good kitchen utensils on top of the stove. Children do not look like scoundrels at all: they wear good things, they dress according to the season (anyone who has seen truly dysfunctional children will understand this).
As for her 32-year-old mother, it turned out that she had never been known to drink before, when you have eight children, the youngest of whom is only a year old, and a farm (the cows need to be fed and milked daily), no There is time to drink excessively.
“The family is indeed registered with us,” said Elena Burbukina, head of the education department of the Yenisei region. -But not because her mother abuses alcohol: during the weekly visits of our specialists to her family, she was never seen drunk. We talked to her about the need to take out the trash, wash the floor, and wash the children’s clothes regularly.
According to neighbors, the family was not in poverty: relatives helped, children’s benefits were paid, the mother worked as a cleaner at school (by the way, when the commission did not find her at home, she was not anywhere else , but at work), the father was there, as a firefighter. Income may be modest, but stable. In general, the “scary” conditions in which the children found themselves turned out to be quite normal for Ust-Pita. “Everyone here lives almost like this,” local residents explained.
“They feed mainly on their farm and garden, as well as fishing and hunting,” explained Natalya Pochekutova, editor-in-chief of Yeniseiskaya Pravda and a close friend of RG. – There is also work in the village, but it is not the easiest: you can get a job as a beacon keeper at Rechflot or as an equipment lineman at Energokom. They spend their free time without pretensions, sometimes drinking in company and, why not, drinking when they have already done all the work. In a word, an ordinary town, of which there are thousands on the map. Why would anyone think he was dying? The young people go to the city, it is true, but those whose hearts are attached to this land, those who are accustomed to this way of life, stay.
If we take a closer look at the video frames, it will be clear that our colleague is right: the houses along the street are strong and spacious, no ruins are visible. And there is also a “plate” hanging in every house, that is, there is the Internet and television, which means that all the news, as well as comments on it, were read and discussed in Ust-Pita. That’s why now they don’t want to talk to strangers. Who would like people who are completely unaware of all the circumstances to rush to make assessments, and so harsh ones at that? After all, the headlines alone are worth it: “In Ust-Pita, eight children were found in an apartment with drunk people, without heat and food”, “Eight children were saved from hunger and cold on the territory of Krasnoyarsk”, “Mother abandoned 8 children without heat or food in an apartment.” with drunk people.” The comments, of course, are even worse.
– The most important question: what’s next? – says Natalya Pochekutova. – The children were taken to Yeniseisk, the mothers are threatened with deprivation of parental rights. If the court makes such a decision, the children will go to an orphanage. It’s good? Clearly not. So why make a fuss? In such matters it is necessary to exercise caution; The task of all services, from the police to guardianship, is to help and support the family. And here… Who thought of the children? How will they be treated in the town, after everything that has been written about the family?
A meeting of the youth affairs commission took place in Yeniseisk last Friday, where the current situation was discussed. It is not known what conclusions those responsible reached, but I would like to believe that the “high-profile case” will be resolved peacefully and the children will be returned to their families.
