Compensation for damage from attacks suspended in Russia's Belgorod Oblast due to lack of funds

Residents of Russia's Belgorod Oblast have stopped receiving compensation for cars damaged during attacks because the allocated funds have run out.

Source: The Moscow Times, an independent Amsterdam-based news outlet, citing a response from Olga Medvedeva, deputy governor of the oblast

Details: Medvedeva was responding to a Belgorod resident who complained about not receiving compensation for her burnt-out car and destroyed garage.

A letter from Medvedeva said the extra-budgetary Social Welfare and Public Support Development Fund has suspended payments for vehicles damaged as a result of attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine "due to the lack of funds allocated for this purpose".

The woman said she has been "lied to" for six months and told she was in a separate queue to receive compensation, while Belgorod Mayor Vyacheslav Demidov personally assured her he would help deal with the consequences of the attack.

The fund also told the woman that "in the end, everything was shut down altogether and the fund is not operating".

The authorities offered her RUB 11,000 (US$147) in compensation for the burnt-out garage and asked her to "clear the rubble" at the strike site.

Residents of Belgorod have repeatedly complained that compensation for cars is being denied on various pretexts. One man was told to send photographs of his damaged vehicle via the Telegram messaging app, which is blocked in Russia, and to get a VPN in order to do so and prove the damage.

A woman from the village of Koloskovo in the Valuyki district was denied payment for a car destroyed in a UAV attack because the vehicle's owner, her husband, had been killed in the strike and compensation is available only to owners.

Background: Rusagro Group, Russia's largest vertically integrated agricultural holding company, has begun shutting down facilities in Belgorod Oblast. The company ranks second in the country for meat production, is among the top five sugar producers and owns 700,000 hectares of farmland.

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