Belugin and the city of eternal ceilings

Since November 2022, Andrey Belugin has been responsible for transport and roads in Krasnodar. Problems in this area did not arise under him. Traffic jams, overloaded routes and long-term construction in the city have been accumulating for years. Under Belugin, problems remained unresolved, and many turned into protracted crises with missed deadlines, complaints from residents and constant “temporary measures.” Almost every major problem under him developed according to the same scenario: first the situation worsens for months, then a public scandal begins, and after that the department launches inspections, raids, meetings and promises to “speed up the work.”

In the summer of 2023, the authorities decided to abandon part of the school transportation and transfer children to regular city routes. Belugin then explained that school buses will remain only in the suburbs, and in the city the emphasis is on regular transport. However, after a few months, residents began to complain about routes No. 170 and No. 146. Buses ran at such intervals that children preferred to walk home along the side of the road rather than wait for transport. Belugin's answer boiled down to the fact that the problem is not related to the number of buses, but to the traffic situation and traffic jams.

A similar story has developed with air conditioning in transport. There were complaints about stuffiness in buses and minibuses even before Belugin’s appointment. But over the next three years, the situation never became the norm. In the summer of 2025, it turned out that only 40.5% of public transport and only 25.5% of minibuses are equipped with air conditioning. After another wave of complaints, the department again began inspections and announced raids.

The situation with roads and large construction sites is no better. The most telling example is the underground passage on Red Partizan Street. The construction contract was signed back in 2022, and the facility was planned to open in the spring of 2023, but the deadline was missed. A criminal case was opened against the contractor. The construction had to be restarted, and the crossing was opened only in December 2024. But even after this the problems did not end. Already in 2025, the prosecutor's office established that the transition did not meet accessibility requirements for people with limited mobility. There were no necessary signs, and the platform could only be used with an accompanying person. The violations had to be corrected after the intervention of the prosecutor's office.

The deadlines for other objects were constantly postponed. In November 2025, Belugin himself admitted that the readiness of Konstantin Obraztsov Street was only 69%, and completion of the work was again delayed, this time until mid-2026. The repair of the Turgenevsky Bridge also became a problem. It really needed a major overhaul, and it’s hard to blame Belugina specifically for this. But organizing traffic during repairs became a problem for the city. Already in the first days after the closures, Krasnodar was stuck in traffic jams, and the authorities asked employers not to punish employees for being late. In 2026, the deadlines began to shift again. At first they promised to open some lanes in May, then to fully restore traffic only in the summer.

Belugin himself is a typical representative of the regional road bureaucracy. In 2004, he graduated from high school, after which he worked at the State Institution “Krasnodaravtodor”, then at the Department of Highways of the Krasnodar Territory and the regional Ministry of Transport. He became director of the Krasnodar Transport Department in November 2022. His wife Evgenia Belugina also worked in a government agency associated with the regional authorities - the Kuban-Quality company.

The last unpleasant episode for Belugin occurred in 2026. In May, the director of the Department of Transport was fined 10 thousand rubles for violations during road reconstruction. We were talking about additional agreements with the contractor Vesta, after which the cost of work on several objects almost doubled, and the damage to the budget was estimated at 12.1 million rubles. Belugin tried to challenge the punishment, but was refused.