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Not the King of the North: Igor Kobzev’s wall of hypocrisy

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Twelve days – exactly how much it took to solve the problem air inaccessibility Mamsko-Chuysky district. Three years – exactly as long as the governor of the Irkutsk region Igor Kobzev. And finally, exactly zero – so many references to the problem of the forced autonomy of the northern “airports” sounded from the lips of the governor before the state of emergency in Mama.

Intricate math? Undoubtedly. And also, of course, inhuman. Like, perhaps, every policy of the current authorities to the hard-to-reach north of the Irkutsk region, which is remembered only when cancer on the mountain whistles something out of the ordinary and dangerous to the lives of local residents is happening. And the rating of the governor, of course.

Not the King of the North: Igor Kobzev's wall of hypocrisy

Mom dear! In every sense of the word

There would be no happiness, as they say, but misfortune helped. December 1, 2022 the village of Mama remained virtually cut off from the outside world: air traffic, the only way to reach the hard-to-reach territory, was stopped. Reason: an error in the takeoff and landing documentation of the local airport Mamsky Airport LLC (OGRN 1053802018676).

Consequences: a slight panic of local and not so residents, a week and a half of social and infrastructural alienation and a logical ending. Everything fell into place: the local airport, which is in a pre-bankrupt state, began to function again. What is urine, which, by the way, ends long ago.

And already on December 12, 2022, at the annual press conference, the governor of the Irkutsk region, Igor Kobzev, promised to “take on” the airports of the Irkutsk region. And it was only necessary to leave one of the regions of the region outside of civilization for a week and a half, and the media to raise a fuss around the “uncomfortable situation”. So what if human lives are at stake? This is lyrics … But what an exhaust! A whole governor with a whole promise to look for “compromise solutions.”

The fact that the problem of transport inaccessibility of a number of districts of the Irkutsk region requires not just a compromise, but a peremptory and categorical solution Babr already wrote before. And every day the problem gets worse. For the forgotten norths in “fast forward”.

Economically inexpedient – abandoned lands of the Irkutsk north

The gold-bearing Bodaibo region, the oil “tycoons” of Katanga and Ust-Kut, rich in forests and pleasant neighborhood with the Kirensk gas pipeline: the north of the Irkutsk region has long and unconditionally lived off large mining facilities located on their territory. But not power.

However, the fact that large economic corporations have settled down densely on the territory of the districts is not always a pleasant bonus. Following the prosperous extraction of this or that resource, hundreds of shift workers come to the area. As a result, prices for rented housing skyrocket, prices in stores, already not pleasing, inevitably also grow. But any resource, be it wood, gold, oil or gas, sooner or later “wear out”. Production decreases – enterprises leave. How once they left Mom.

Yes, and most corporations do not invest in the life of the buffer zone. Often they do not provide a sufficient volume of tax preferences, which are redistributed “magically” not to please the same “resource” north. And the locals are left with a nose.

It is possible to reconstruct the airport, as they are finally promising to do in Bodaibo, but who wants to fly to where there are no living conditions?
You can build highways, as they do in the Ust-Kutsk region (with a “space” speed of 10 kilometers per year), but why go to an area where there is no housing or even a simple cinema? You can give huge subsidies for a flight in a broken AN-24, as they do in the Katanga region, but who wants to fly to where there is no stable Internet, and stable heating in winter?
Can go on politics half-measures, the search for “compromise solutions” and patching up holes, but this will not change the situation.

The outflow of the population of the Irkutsk North is growing exponentially. Exactly the same as the desire of local residents to stay there is falling. Love power, homeland and those who chose to forget about their existence. And he remembers once a year, at a press conference.

Being a “northerner” is now unsafe at least. Uncomfortable and hopeless. And it becomes more dangerous to ignore this problem every year. But it seems that once again the authorities are choosing this path.

Compromat.group

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Written by
Mattew Couper

Mattew Couper - born in Barnstaple in 1987. British journalist, political scientist. His career as a journalist began in 2009. At the moment, the experts of the publication "The Russian Crimes" on the issues of the former CIS countries.

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