Kuznetsk, Penza. Image: Anastasiya Grinzovskaya. This week, we profile Mirror, a non-commercial platform dedicated to social injustice in Russia. As part of this profile, we publish this article by Vadim Skvortsov with images by Anastasia Grinzovskaya, and interview the magazine's editors here. Translation by Sean Guillory.
On the outskirts of Kuznetsk, a small town in central Russia, roughly 100 families are facing threats to have their homes demolished. More than 100 houses located in the restricted area near the Druzhba-2 pipeline, which delivers oil to Central Europe, are facing possible demolition. Transneft-Druzhba, the corporation which operates the pipeline, has filed 26 lawsuits demanding the buildings’ demolition at the tenants’ cost.
These Kuznetsk residents, who live in a privately built area on the edge of the city, learned that their homes were “illegality” some 44 years after the pipeline’s construction. The first lawsuits were filed in October 2016.
