In video appeal to Putin, Irkutsk region residents propose asking Xi Jinping for help building new school

Residents of the Beryozovy neighbourhood in Russia's Irkutsk Oblast have published a video appeal to Vladimir Putin complaining of a “critical shortage” of school and kindergarten capacity, and suggesting that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov ask Chinese President Xi Jinping to fund a new school.

In the clip, which was posted on Sunday and amplified by the independent outlet Ostorozhno, Novosti, residents residents note that their neighbourhood of roughly 40,000 people relies on nearby schools with a combined capacity of only about 2,500 students. For five years, they say, locals have petitioned the presidential administration for help. They add that a planned new school is only 20% built, with completion promised by 2027, while construction on a promised new kindergarten has been frozen and unfunded for two years.

Their appeals, the residents continue, have gone nowhere. Every complaint to the Putin administration is passed down to the Irkutsk regional governor and education ministry, which respond only with form letters.

The residents then suggest that if federal funding is truly out of reach, then Lavrov should approach Xi Jinping with a request to fund construction “within the framework of ethnocultural diversity and the active development of cultural ties with China.” They add that they are prepared to start learning Mandarin, since their country's priorities, as they see it, “lie somewhere between building new metro lines in Moscow and constructing new schools in Tajikistan”.

Beryozovy residents told the independent journalism project Veter that they’ve spent years trying to get the federal authorities’ attention regarding the neighborhood’s school situation. Anna, a 42-year-old mother who appeared in the video, said that the problem has been ongoing for nearly a decade. 

Many residents, she said, bought apartments in the neighborhood based on the authorities’ construction plan, which included a school and kindergarten. In the years that followed, however, the plans changed, the school plot was used for residential buildings, and residents’ pleas to authorities to build a new school were repeatedly ignored or met with delays and evasions.

According to Anna, residents hope that a federal commission from Moscow will eventually visit the area. “[We want] them to come see how we’re living here. To be appalled, damn it, and write a report,” she told Veter.

The mention of Xi Jinping in the video was deliberate, Anna said, and made rhetorically. “We intentionally wrote this appeal provocatively, because that’s the only way we can attract the attention [of the authorities and media],” she said. 

She also emphasized that the residents don’t actually expect real help from China.

“We understand that, broadly speaking, Xi Jinping couldn’t care less about us,” she told Veter. “If our own country doesn’t give a damn about us, then he certainly doesn’t either.”