Voentorg is appropriate

The Nizhny Novgorod military registration and enlistment office, through the court, takes away from the families of the dead military personnel the paid pension for the loss of the breadwinner. Ilya Shepelin followed the absurd court session

“Great greetings from the North Caucasus. I don’t know if the letter will come, but I’ll try anyway. The letters do not all reach for months, ”Major Sergei Lostev wrote in an uneven handwriting in March 1996, squatting in a tent in front of a wooden box, which he used instead of the table. - The regiment did not participate in the hostilities this year. So do not worry and take less to the TV! We are fighting with ourselves. Lice, dirt, life is starving ... If nothing changes, then in the summer we will see you. Vacation after Chechnya is large - more than a hundred days. ”

A few weeks later, the regiment of Major Goliaev was ambushed. On a winding mountain road in the Argun Gorge, several landmines were simultaneously tearing. In the tank, who headed the column of armored vehicles, detonated their own shells. The tank tower jumped and fell to the side, and the body of the major blocked the road. The column has lost control. A little later, the crew of the car that closed the system was shot. The regiment has become a hostage to the gorge, on all sides of which fire was fired. Tanks, trucks, armored vehicles were burning.

Left: 1988. Sergey with his wife Eugenia and daughters Nastya and Anya
Right: Chechnya, 1996. Second to the right - Sergey Losteev photo: from personal archive

The body of Major Goliaev was identified in the military hospital of Rostov-on-Don. “High -temperature thermal injury with total carbonization of the skin, multiple fragmentation wounds,” the doctors said. The shelling in the Argun Gorge on April 16, 1996 carried away the lives of 73 Russian servants and, entitled “ The Battle of Yaryshmard ,” became one of the most tragic events of the First Chechen War.

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- The process may contain information considered military secret. Therefore, according to the order of the Minister of Defense from 2013, we demand to remove media representatives from the hall! - Employees of the Ministry of Defense insist at the beginning of the court session. The already absurd case about the deprivation of the pension Evgenia Lesiaeva, whose husband died 20 years ago in the Argun Gorge, can become closed. After a short break, the judge, spreading his hands, announces that she did not find in the legislation this order on military secret.

- And he, your honor, should not be there! This is a secret order, - not embarrassed, explains the employee of the military enlistment office.

Representatives of the Ministry of Defense at the end of last year deprived Evgeny Luriaev’s pensions on the loss of the breadwinner and sued her, deciding to recover the money she had already received on this benefit. The military registration and enlistment office felt for a legal loophole, which was checked in practice Lesiaeva in order to stop the payment of pensions to a significant part of the widows. Those who, after the death of her husband, got a job in the army.

“When Seryozha died, we were left almost without a livelihood,” says Eugene. - Up to 50 years old, if you work, you cannot receive a pension for the loss of the breadwinner. Only benefits for children. You can not work and receive. But it is impossible to live with this money. Usually, girls who are younger when they lose their husband in the army, ask the question: will they survive up to 50? ”

For three years of receiving a survivor pension of the breadwinner of six thousand rubles, she faces six years in prison

Losyaeva with two children lived in the village of Muline, in which military units are deployed. The only work that she found there with her education of a chemist-technologist is an assistant to a kindergarten teacher. But already during the First Chechen War, the Ministry of Defense began to recruit military widows-to somehow help them.

“If the widow was consistent with the standards, health allows, then they have been taken, then they took her to the service without question ... We were taken from us all other than one who had heart problems,” Eugene explains. In 1996, she entered radio communications, starting a private. Now, at the age of 54, Losteva continues to serve as a sergeant and is waiting for a retirement of the length of service. For the past four years, she also received a pension for the loss of the breadwinner.

“And at the end of last year they simply stopped listing a pension. When I began to be interested, the woman with whom I usually talked at the military enlistment office was surprised: “How? You haven't received papers yet? Then wait! Everything will be explained soon. ” And the paper came - the summons to the court. "

Evgenia, widow Sergey Losteev photo: Mikhail Solunin for TD

As it turned out, the Military Commissariat of the Nizhny Novgorod Region considered a mistake to pay pensions on the loss of the breadwinner to the widows who continue to serve in the army. Later, in court, representatives of the military registration and enlistment office will explain that if the widows did not work for the Ministry of Defense, but in another field, they could legally receive such a pension after 50 years. However, because of their service in the army, "a double load is laid on the department." Officials demand to return more than 600 thousand rubles paid by Losteva for four years, and pushing the fact that she hid the fact of serving in the army.

“It sounds especially terrible, given that I usually came to the department of social protection of the military registration and enlistment office,” the widow complains. - When I was summoned to court, I asked a woman who had been in the commissariat for five years now, to come and act as a witness. But she only asked who I was, and said that she saw me for the first time. "

Next to the calm Evgenia Losteva, Natalya Semak, a woman is more assertive and impulsive. Her husband Alexei died at a military training ground in 1996. He, along with two colleagues, crushed a drunken soldier-handle on a truck.

“I was not taken to work. Everyone refused when they found out about five children. They said that I would be on sick leave all the time and do my daughters, and not work. When it was allowed to take the widows of the dead military to the army, I finally went to work with a topogodesist in the part where my husband served. ”

On the left: Alexey Semak
Right: Wedding of Alexei and Natalia Photo: From Personal Archive

Before entering the service, Natalia received a manual of 1,400 rubles for herself and five daughters. As soon as it comes to him and how she had to survive with five daughters after the death of her husband, she begins to cry. The financial claims of the military registration and enlistment office against Natalia Semak grew into a criminal case.

“This is probably all because of my character. Our circumstances with Zhenya are almost no different, except for one. I myself went to look for the truth, ”Semak remarks dejectedly. - I get two pensions in total: for the length of service and by the loss of the breadwinner. At some point, only part began to reach me. It turned out that the military registration and enlistment office in itself decided to hold the payments - in this way he decided to recover from me the money that, in his opinion, I “kidnapped”, while I received a benefit of loss of the breadwinner, continuing to serve. To achieve justice, I reached the military prosecutor's office. They told me there: “Does the military registration and enlistment office take your pension from you without a court decision?! But this is illegal! This is arbitrariness! We will figure it out! " Well, we figured it out - a few days later a criminal case was brought against me. ”

“In November 2011, Semak had a criminal intent on the unlawful theft of budget funds paid in accordance with the Law“ On Pension Support of Persons who underwent Military Service ”as a pension for the loss of the breadwinner. Semak, being a contract for a contract, turned to the department of the Military Commissariat of the Nizhny Novgorod Region on the issue of assigning the above pension to it, on the same day Semak N.V., continuing to realize her criminal intent, acting from selfish interest, filled out a statement on the appointment of a pension for the loss of a breadwinner, ”a widow read about herself in the decree. Over the three years of receiving a survivor of a breadwinner of six thousand rubles, she faces six years in prison under the article “Large Estimation”.

Now in the midst of the process on the financial claims of the military commissariat to Losteva. In the criminal case, Semak is a consequence. The military registration and enlistment office also refused to pay pensions on the loss of the breadwinner to other widows of the military, who serve in the army, like Losteva.

“What are you? What are the fighting? It was the usual business trip to Chechnya "

“What is happening to us is just scary,” Evgenia Losteeva says tiredly. -We are used to trust in Armenian people who are supposed to protect us. They are the only ones we could count on after the loss of husbands. But we had to fight for every penny and bring endless certificates that they demanded from us. Constantly confirm the armies that your husband died in execution. In 2013, I had to prove in court that Seryozha died in hostilities. But then the commissariat said: “What are you? What are the fighting? It was a regular business trip to Chechnya. ” Then our collective lawsuit defended the Foundation “Mother's Right” - the only people who have embarked for us. And for the fact that our husbands were recognized by veterans of military operations, we received a premium: a thousand rubles.

Natalia, widow Alexei Semak photo: Mikhail Solunin for TD

- But who is at all for us? The ministry has some of his own interests, which there is not enough reason to understand,-Semak is getting excited. -For example, until recently, the widow could get some small monthly benefits: train travel, some medicines. But someone in the ministry put a comma in this position and inscribed: "It is supposed only to lonely living widows." And what now, in their opinion, children should be thrown out or drowned in the garbage dump to get medicines? And after all, someone thought and specially made such an inhuman clarification.

- But the shelling in the Argun Gorge was a famous episode of the First Chechen, then a lot was talked about on TV. Didn't you take care of you then?

“Then, of course, they remembered,” says Evgenia Losteva. - Boris Nemtsov ( in 1996, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region. - TD) on the occasion of the withdrawal of troops from Chechnya allocated four apartments to veterans. One of them was received by our family. Imagine, they say to me: "They will hand you an apartment." And I reply: “What an apartment, I don’t want to go ... After all, the train with our regiment is returning, but Seryozha is not there ...” I was then chopped out by some sedative and put me to meet the train before the television cameras. I stood so chock. I received the keys to the apartment, the order, but I don’t remember this ... - Now the lumps in the throat and tears on the face of Losteva, but it is interrupted by Natalya Semak, who hardly restrained the last minutes.

- Then it was very difficult ... We lived very hungry. There was no money at all. And here, as Alyosha died, everyone dragged at once - they brought money, food, they immediately remembered that I have children ... Soon, however, this ended. All day they drank tea with sugar - they ate. It was saved that children at school and in kindergarten made dinners free. Only in 2000, when I went to the service, at least a frozen chicken appeared at home instead of cubes soup. Since 1996, we have dreamed of only one thing: to survive the death of husbands, hunger and just go to the life of the house-work-house. But in our state it is believed that even such things should not be provided to people just like that. Now our acquaintances, who received exactly the same pension, are afraid and are waiting for them to come for them, ”says Natalia.

"The slogan of the Ministry of Defense" we do not throw "sounds to us by mockery"

“This slogan of the Ministry of Defense“ we don’t throw our own ”sounds a mockery for us,” Semak is angry. - What other are your own? Our army does not consider anyone for its own. I would like that we had an army in which it is honorable to serve. But what kind of honor can be in the place where, as in our case, they want to say only one thing: “Sit quietly and do not stick anywhere until the military registration and enlistment office takes everything you want from you!” And he, the military registration and enlistment office, probably would have done so if they had not stood up for us from the “mother’s right”. Without the publicity that the Fund gave our business, we would simply be smoothed and wiped. Nobody stood up in the army for us. ”

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On the morning of April 5, 2016, Judge Plaksin nevertheless rejected the procession of the military registration and enlistment office to close the process for the press on a secret order on secrecy. In addition to the lady in a black dress with a playful spider web on the sleeves, the commissariat is represented by the stocky official of the millstones. He sets out arguments with the intonations of the manager, which was not returned to the shovel and broom taken on receipt.

- I understand what you are pushing! - He interrupts the lawyer from the Foundation "Mother's Right", representing the interests of Losteva. -The Constitution to everyone, in general, guarantees equality of rights, but here the question is different! Here we are talking about the right to provide after dismissal from the service. And how can you pay a pension to someone who has not quit from service? And even somehow the Constitutional Court rejected the claim of the employee who was so trying to receive a disability pension!

On the left: representatives of the Nizhny Novgorod military commissariat of the millstones and Nesterenko. Right: letter of Sergei Losteva to his native photo: Ilya Shepelin

-That is, in your opinion, the widow-military services after 50 years should make a choice: either quit and receive a pension on the loss of the breadwinner, or not to quit and not receive? But this does not apply to the widows of military personnel who do not serve, but work in any other field - they can continue to work and receive a pension for the loss of the breadwinner.

“Well, yes,” Zhernykleev answers lazily.

- But the same infringes the rights of a whole group of citizens.

- This is the law.

“But why did you stop the payment of her pensions without a court decision?”

- Because she received it illegally, which led to unjust enrichment from 2011 to 2015 for more than 250 thousand rubles!

The main argument of the Military Commissariat was that Lostyeva deceived officials. According to them, applying for a pension on the loss of the breadwinner, she did not indicate in the questionnaire that she was a military.

- We did not think that she was serving. How did we know, she did not bring a certificate to us. And the military enlistment office was misleading! - The official in a black dress almost switches to a cry.

- And did you not have the opportunity to check the reliability of the information provided? - the judge was a little taken aback.

- What are the requests? What if she served in the FSB? Then they would not answer us from there.

- Logical. But she served in the Ministry of Defense, and not in the FSB?

- But I could serve in the FSB - and there, I assure you, do not answer our requests.

As an evidence that Evgenia Losyaev never hid the fact that she was serving, lawyer Denis Shedov handed over the “Book of Memory” to officials. This is the book of the Ministry of Defense about the military who died in Chechnya. Including it tells Sergey Losteva, on the same pages his widow says that she went to serve in the army. The employee of the military enlistment office looked at the book, scratched his nose and asked not to attach it to the matter. This book also published a letter from Sergey Losteva to his wife and daughters.

“... I can imagine how difficult it is for you, but it is more difficult for me that I can’t help you with anything. Hold on. We are waiting for some changes in March. Rather, on vacation. Zhenya, as you asked, is simply impossible to come ... like a school? Job? Do not cry, otherwise I feel everything, and it’s hard for me. 75 days have passed. There are 105 left. I kiss everyone. Your dad. 06.03.96 " .

The next court hearing in the Losteva case will be held on April 11.