About
Rejected, constantly persecuted by the local authorities, he doesn’t give up. He fights every day for his own survival.
Dismissed a long time ago from his position of forest ranger, he continues to watch over the nature around his house, trying to keep away the poachers whom destroy and kill every living being. He also stands up to the woodcutters and tries to protect what’s left of the forest.
He was being intimidated, threatened, violently beaten, his house was once burned down, but he was and still is a man who is not afraid to fight for causes he believes are right and truly good.
He doesn’t fear to call the people who are responsible of this mess in the country by their names, even though they are powerful, influential and almost invincible.
With his very modest pension of 7 thousand rubles (170 euros) he finds a way to take care of three minor children three months a year, children over whom he has a guardianship.
The rest of the year, while they’re living in a boarding school, he helps them buy schoolbooks, clothes and food. Other kids, abandoned by their parents, want to live with him.
He doesn’t reject anyone; every child for him is like his own.
According to statistics, there are almost 3 million homeless children in Russia. The number was even lower at the end of the Russian Civil War in 1921.
In December 2012, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted a law, which directly forbids the citizens of the USA from adopt children from orphanages, especially the disabled children.
This law had been passed in response to the USA’s “Magnitsky Act” in which Russian officials were ‘punished’ for the death of a man who exposed enormous fraud involving officials responsible of the embezzlement of public funds.
As a counterattack, 420 deputies of the State Duma, the Federation Council and the President Putin himself simply took hostages thousands of disadvantaged, helpless and poor children, by taking away from them the hope and possibility to someday find a home and a family, literally leading many of them to death.
Children became the fractional money in the dirty political games of the Russian authority.
Credits
Pavel VASSILIEV (GRAD) - Director, producer, editor.
Andrei SHARONOFF - Cameraman
