Refugees from occupied Kursk protest Russian government’s failure to deliver promised assistance, such as adequate housing

More than 100 refugees who fled Ukraine’s invasion of the Sudzhansky district in Russia’s occupied Kursk region assembled in central Kursk on Sunday to protest the Russian authorities’ failure to deliver promised debt relief, adequate temporary shelter, and compensation for lost housing. A similar but smaller demonstration occurred in central Kursk three days earlier.

A protester on Sunday named Natalia Kosinova told journalists at Agentstvo Media that she was forced from her home in Sudzha by Ukrainian incursion troops three months ago, but the Russian officials have offered her only a cot in a vacant department store in Zheleznogorsk, some 70 miles northwest.

Kosinova said landlords in Kursk have been reluctant to offer the formal rental contracts refugees need for housing support from the state because property owners “want to stay off the taxman’s radar.” 

On Sunday, representatives of the governor’s office confronted the demonstrators and reportedly spoke “condescendingly” to the crowd, though officials reportedly recorded some demonstrators’ statements and vowed to share them with their supervisors.