How a man in Vladivostok reported his neighbors to the police for eating banned goose meat

A man in Vladivostok called the police on August 16 to report his neighbors, whom he accused of eating illegally imported goose meat. The story was reported by the local website VL.ru, which included a photograph of the police report. It all looked so fake that Meduza didn't even write about this incident, at first. But it turns out that a man really did smell goose meat cooking at his neighbor's home, and he really did call the police. And, afterwards, he even gave a few interviews. 

The police report said roughly, "At 9:21 p.m., on August 16, 2015, a phone call was received by a Vladivostok resident born in 1964, claiming that, at the address of 16 Ovchinnikov Street, a woman is eating goose meat, according to the caller, and other neighbors are smoking Dutch tobacco." 

According to the caller, who goes by the name Nikolai, he discovered the wrapper of goose meat in the trash outside his building. It was written in Polish, he says, and he recognized it from the now viral video of Tatarstan's police bulldozing three confiscated geese into a landfill. Later that evening, Nikolai smelled the goose meat cooking in his neighbor's kitchen, he says.

Not long afterwards, Nikolai also detected the scent of Dutch tobacco. "These cigarettes don't have the normal filter—they're roll-up cigarettes, and the smell is so unusual. It's not like anything that's sold here. I decided that they were smoking Dutch tobacco," he explained.

Nikolai says he wasn't trying to get his neighbors punished, but he couldn't remain silent about the boycotted goose meat. "I served in the army and I understand the situation like this: we have our superiors and they give orders that we must carry out, meaning there is the law and we must obey it."

Nikolai also said, however, that the only reason he phoned the police to report his neighbors is because he was drunk. "Yeah, if I'd been sober, I'd not have called anybody, that's for sure," he told reporters, saying he is on good terms with his neighbors. (In another interview, strangely, Nikolai claimed to have a strained relationship with his neighbors.)

According to current Russian law, only importing and selling sanctioned food imports is illegal. Consuming these products, for the time being, is still permitted by the law.