In recent days, TV Tsentr and REN TV have covered the situation of civilians and military pensioners left in Pereyaslavka-2 when its unit relocated under Defense Minister Serdyukov’s ‘new profile’ reforms. Pereyaslavka-2 is a military ‘monotown’ or garrison town that owed its existence to its unit.
Pereyaslavka-2 is located in Khabarovsk Kray, and its unit belonged to the Air Forces and Air Defense Army (AVVSPVO) in the Far East Military District. Pilots and technicians went to their new base, but 400 civilian workers were dismissed. When the unit left Pereyaslavka-2, 120 former military families were ordered to leave service apartments they long occupied. These people did not move with the units and are deemed to lack any connection to the Defense Ministry and must surrender Defense Ministry housing. Some of these former servicemen have been waiting ten years for a state housing certificate or a permanent apartment. Their apartments are to be turned over to local civilian housing authorities.
The Defense Ministry says these civilians must take their problems to civilian authorities. Khabarovsk would like to take over Pereyaslavka-2, but it has not received the proper documents to do so. Khabarovsk officials say it’s up to the Defense Ministry and the federal government to transfer responsibility for the garrison’s housing to local control. Khabarovsk can’t take Pereyaslavka-2’s housing on its balance sheet until the garrison’s status as a closed town is lifted, but only the RF government can do this. Meanwhile, the current inhabitants fear the local housing authorities will redistribute their apartments.
In November, Tikhookeanskaya zvezda said 2,500 families of the officers and civilians were left behind in Pereyaslavka-2. They wrote the regional government asking who would be responsible for the normal functioning of housing, municipal services, and heating this winter in place of the Defense Ministry. Regional officials said they were working with the military and everything was under control. The region would retrain dismissed officers and make available some of the apartments needed for the military.
Recall this fall that former Air Forces personnel and civilians in the western Russian garrison town of Shatalovo put on their own mini-Pikalevo to protest their unit’s relocation to Voronezh. The unit’s move left 3,000 residents in a town given up by the Defense Ministry, but not yet taken over by Smolensk Oblast. See Kommersant for good coverage of the events in Shatalovo.
Russian Defense Policy 