Russian president's neighbor, mother of six, gets evicted from her home

It goes without saying that all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way

Four years have passed since the moment when Olga Ponomareva was evicted from the communal apartment. A truck arrived to the apartment block that day, workers loaded the woman's possessions on it, and took everything away. Olga was a mother of four at that time; furthermore, she was pregnant. Olga filed a lawsuit and won the trial, having proved her right to live in that apartment. However, things are still right where they started: the mother of many children - she has six kids now - is still homeless.

It goes without saying that all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. The family of Nina Vasilieva, Olga Ponomareva's mother, is sophisticatedly unhappy, if one may say so. Their son, Andrei, had a spinal contusion during his service in the army. He could hardly get home by himself; the young man was suffering from terrible pain. Andrei's blood was poisoned during the operation, in spite of the fact that it had a positive outcome – the spine was cured. The young man has been repeatedly operated on the heart and became a disabled person as a result. Another operation is to follow for him in the near future.

Olga's life was not better either: her husband died in 1993. Olga had to move in with her mother in the Moscow region. They were living in a room of the above-mentioned communal apartment, from where the woman and her children were later evicted.

”The story started when I received a three-room apartment, which was meant for four people: me, my son, his wife and their daughter. The little girl was disabled since her early childhood. I am a disabled person too, so there are three of us. We moved out, while Olga, her new husband Igor and their children stayed in our room. When she was living in the apartment, she received documents of temporal registration several times. Then they simply kicked them out of the flat,” Nina Vasilieva said.

It is worth mentioning that Olga Ponomareva and her children did not find themselves in the street. The family was offered a small room in a hostel. “The living conditions here are unbearable. There is only one bathroom for eight flats here. I cannot get the registration either, which makes it impossible for me to receive medical services and children's allowance. I had to give birth to my child at home,” Olga said.

It is extremely hard for an ordinary mortal to win a process at court, although Olga managed to succeed. A local court ruled to return the flat in the communal apartment to Olga Ponomareva and register the woman in it. However, it turned out that it was very painstaking to execute the court's decision.

The most curious fact about the story is that it is all happening in the medical complex of the presidential administration, which is rather close to Vladimir Putin's residence. The president has been repeating it over and over again that the creation of the reliable legal system in Russia is vital. However, Putin's subordinates do not seem to observe the law at all.