Residents of a Russian neighborhood, where a school has gone unbuilt for five years, ask China’s President Xi Jinping for help

Residents of the Beryozovy neighborhood outside Irkutsk have asked Russia’s Foreign Ministry to appeal to Chinese President Xi Jinping to build them a school “within the framework of ethnocultural diversity and the active development of cultural ties with China.”

Beryozovy has around two thousand school-age children, the Russian Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti reported, and they are forced to travel to the neighboring villages of Markovo and Lugovoye to attend school. “The distance to the school in Lugovoye is about 12 kilometers (7 miles). You can only get there by bus or personal car. If there’s no traffic, it takes 15 to 20 minutes; if there is, 40 minutes — and you also have to account for the lack of roads,” the outlet quoted local residents as saying. Both village schools are overcrowded.

A new school with capacity for 1,500 students had been promised for Beryozovy as far back as 2021. Construction finally began in 2025, but by 2026, residents said, work had stopped.

“As of February 13, 2026, the facility is only 20% complete, according to open sources. The planned completion date was 2027,” the residents said.

The Irkutsk region’s Construction Ministry told residents that funding for the school’s construction had not been allocated in the regional budget for the next two years.

Construction of a kindergarten in the neighborhood was also frozen two years ago, residents said.

Residents said they had repeatedly appealed to Russia’s Presidential Administration, only to have their complaints redirected to local authorities, who said there was no money.

Now residents have decided to ask Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to appeal to Chinese President Xi Jinping to help resolve the school construction issue.

“We are ready to start learning Chinese, because we genuinely believe we really need it. The active development of cultural ties with China is the only path of development available to us, given that our country’s priorities lie somewhere in the area of building new metro stations in Moscow and new schools in Tajikistan,” they said.

The Beryozovy neighborhood, which is part of the Markovo municipal district, is home to around 20,000–25,000 people. Beryozovy is located immediately adjacent to Irkutsk, and most of the neighborhood’s residents work in the regional capital. In July 2024, Irkutsk Online published an account by one of Beryozovy’s residents, in which she complained about difficulties with public transportation and access to medical care, and also noted that the neighborhood has no school of its own, while the waitlist for kindergarten is enormous.

News of Beryozovy residents’ appeal to Xi Jinping emerged on the eve of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to China.