"Become Russian"

This article originally appeared Takie Dela.
Text: Natalya Nekhlebova | Photos: Maria Semenova

In April 2022, Oxana's family fled the fighting in Slavyansk, Ukraine, and has been living for nearly four years in the village of Davydovo, in Moscow Oblast. They have faced hatred from neighbors, humiliation, and assault. Oxana's third child was born in Russia, but the country’s social welfare bureaucracy is blocking the establishment of his residency in Moscow Oblast. Because of this, Oxana is denied all the benefits due mothers of three or more children, and her infant has no right to medical care, kindergarten or schooling.

All official responses, court rulings, and audio and video recordings are in the passion of the article’s editors.

"At first we hid in the cellar at my parents' house," said Oxana, a small, slight woman with blue eyes. "It's a very solid cellar. My grandfather built it."

At the beginning, Oxana, her husband and their children, like so many future refugees, believed that "this would end soon." But the fighting intensified, the family spent more and more time in the cellar, and shells were landing very close by. The children – her son Vova was five, her daughter Olya eight – were terrified, yet the rarely cried. Under the stress, Olya’s skin and eyes darkened; she turned brown. Vova grew increasingly silent. From March 11 to April 5, 2022, the family rarely left the cellar.

On April 5, they decided to leave.

Shurpa

On the day they left, Oxana was wearing her grandmother's down shawl. While in the celler, she had been wrapping it around her lower back to protect her kidneys from the cold. The children wore their winter boots.

Outside, it was already very warm. Near her parents' house, a grafted lilac was about to bloom.

"We had planted it together, my parents and I. That year it was supposed to flower for the first time. The buds had just started to open. I was waiting to see it, but we left – and on June 12, something hit the yard. Now there is a big crater there. No house, no lilac."

Oxana grabbed a jar of apricot jam and a loaf of bread. That was essentially what they lived on during the five days they spent waiting in line at the Russian border. The family entered Russia at Valuyki. As they crossed, three missiles were shot down overhead, one after another.

"There, just like at home, the windows were taped over with Xs, and sandbags were stacked against them."

The family decided not to stay in Belgorod Oblast and drove on. They had a thousand dollars. Through acquaintances, Oxana found an apartment in the village of Davydovo, in the Orekhovo-Zuyevo district of Moscow Oblast, which the landlord had agreed to rent for R10,000 – but when the tenants arrived, he asked for R15,000.

The apartment had no sink, no washing machine, no dishes – only a bed. It was a ground-floor unit, and the radiators barely worked.

"It was very cold there in winter," Oxana recalled. "We shut the door to the room. All four of us slept under a single blanket. We ran two space heaters."

At first, there was no money at all. Oxana's husband Yuri went to work part-time at a tire shop. Oxana stayed home with the children.

"You sit there with nothing – no bread, no cup – and stare out the window at the rain. You cannot even go out, because your only pair of jeans will get soaked. Back home I never noticed the things around me; I took them for granted. I only began to value them when I was drinking tea from a half-liter jar, or washing clothes by hand and waiting three days for them to dry. It was shameful, because at home we had everything we needed."

In Slavyansk, Oxana had worked as acting branch manager at a bank. Yuri had an auto-painting business.

Oxana recalls that during their first month in Russia, they often did not have money even for half a loaf of bread. "We had only 16 rubles, and a half-loaf cost 22." But in Davydovo, a warm-hearted Tajik family lived nearby.

"The children and I were sitting at home with no food, waiting for Yura to get back from the tire shop and bring whatever money he had. There was a knock at the door. It was the neighbor, a Tajik woman. A very young girl. She speaks poor Russian. And in her hands she is holding a plate – a big one, like a tray. On it was a clay bowl, and in the bowl there was soup. She said: 'This is shurpa [Tajik lamb soup], from us to you.' I have never eaten a better soup in my life."

The next day the neighbor brought a bag of potatoes, then onions, salad, sweet flatbreads and plain ones.

"I knew nothing about Tajikistan. I had heard so much about how Tajiks are 'this way or that,' and here she was, such a kind person!"

Oxana also got to know another neighbor, a young woman named Liza. That winter, the children were constantly sick because of the cold in the apartment. Liza brought them currants and viburnum.

"We became very close friends. She looked out for me, and could even stay with the children for a little while when I needed her to."

In the early days, Oxana's family bought groceries at a warehouse that sold expired goods by weight. Bread cost 50 rubles a kilogram.

"The expiration date had passed by a day or two," Oxana said, "or the packaging was damaged. For 1,500 rubles you could buy a week's worth of food."

Window Six

The family also needed money for paperwork: translating and notarizing their Ukrainian passports and birth certificates. Getting temporary asylum for four people cost the family around R80,000 ($1000 at the current exchange rate).

Obtaining a Russian Federation passport at the migration office of the Orekhovo-Zuyevo municipal district proved nearly impossible. Window number six at the migration service constantly demanded new documents: proof of the children's registration at their place of residence, vaccination records. Without these records, they were not allowed to see the doctors. Oxana was advised to make a quick trip home to Slavyansk and bring back the necessary certificates.

"It was as if they did not understand where we had come from, or what was happening there. Eventually they did allow us to see the doctors without the vaccination records."

Oxana tried to find work in her field at a bank branch, then to get a cashier's job at a supermarket, but was turned down both times: she had no citizenship. And with "temporary asylum" status, the family could not leave the Orekhovo-Zuyevo district for more than five days.

Oxana and her husband filed applications for Russian passports repeatedly. Each time, they first had to appear in person and sign up for an appointment, then stand in line for half a day. Right next to the migration office there was a business that helped fill out applications for R5,000 per person.

"They kept sending us from Window Six to that paid agency. And we were trying to figure out how to pay the rent next month. Where would we get that kind of money? We filled out the forms ourselves, but at Window Six they told us every single time that the application was filled out incorrectly and needed to be redone. They told us: 'Why did you come here? Nobody invited you.'"

Oxana was given the contact information for an aide to a State Duma deputy. One day she tried to submit her application to the curly-haired woman at Window Six while on a video call with him.

"I say to the woman at Window Six: 'Please accept the citizenship application.' She answers: 'Everything is wrong here.' I say: 'What exactly is wrong?' She picks up the application, then tosses it back at me: 'The comma is in the wrong place.' The deputy's aide asked me to point the camera at this woman, and he introduced himself to her and said: 'I'm not quite sure I understand – what comma?' She turned red, spun around and ran away. Then a different woman came downstairs and accepted all our documents. That was on August 5."

They waited for the passports until the end of October. But citizenship was denied anyway. The explanation was that a new regulation had been issued and all the paperwork would have to be submitted again.

Buying Bananas

The family had no money or energy to start the citizenship ordeal all over again. But Oxana was fortunate enough to find work as a cleaning woman in an office building. At first, she was promised R15,000 rubles a month, and, when they found out where she was from, they started paying her R20,000.

The children were admitted to school even without citizenship or registration – by a decision of the school principal. Her son was accepted into first grade at age six, because Oxana needed to work and could not leave a young child home alone. The school principal and education department officials of the Orekhovo-Zuyevo municipal district understood the situation and enrolled the boy in first grade.

To this day, Oxana's children are frightened by anything in the sky – even seagulls can evoke a panic response. Little Olya dissolves into hysterics at the sound of firecrackers. Vova had long gone silent, and then his speech problems began. He could produce sounds but could not always form a complete word. The local social welfare office would not allow the boy to receive assistance in their district because he had no Moscow Oblast registration. The fact of his residency had to be established in court. Specialists only began working with the child in March 2024 – a psychologist, a speech therapist, a massage therapist. There has been some improvement, but his speech problems remain.

Nonetheless, Oxana's children are doing well in school. Vova also attends an arts school, where he is learning to play the accordion; he trains at a sports school in track and field and skiing, and attends a theater club. Olya is passionate about dance, gymnastics and skiing.

Oxana found a second job at a supermarket, stocking shelves and pulling expired products. She was paid R1,000 for each shift.

"In a month I can earn 15,000 at the supermarket and another 20,000 cleaning," Oxana says with a smile. "That is 35,000 – no small potatoes. We can buy the children shoes for fall and winter. We can even come to the store and not just grab the markdown items. I could buy the children bananas!"

Oxana's family misses the apricots of Slavyansk, where in season they were everywhere – the ground was carpeted with them. They miss the apple trees in her parents' garden, her grandfather's vineyard.

"It has probably all frozen by now," Oxana sighed. "The vines need to be covered for winter. I am sorry we did not manage to take any photographs with us from home. My daughter still remembers what my grandmother looks like, but my son no longer does. It is painful to think that my grandfather planted a garden, grew apple trees, sweet cherries and sour cherries so his great-grandchildren could eat from them – and I cannot even show them his portrait. I also keep a little dried earth from the soles of the shoes we arrived in, in a small yellow Kinder Surprise box – earth from home."

34 Square Meters

In January 2023, the owner informed Oxana that he had sold the apartment and they had 10 days to move out. But the family could not leave the Orekhovo-Zuyevo municipal district because their temporary asylum was registered there. They needed to find another school, but in the middle of the school year, no school would take the children without Russian documents. With enormous difficulty, Oxana found an apartment in the same district.

"We looked at it. We liked everything. The landlord liked us too. But when he saw our temporary asylum documents, he asked: 'Where are you from, exactly?' I said: 'We are from Donetsk Oblast. It has been recognized in the Constitution as part of Russia.' He replied: 'I do not rent to khokhly. I hate all of you. This apartment can sit empty for six more months – I still would not rent it to you.'" [FN: A Russian ethnic slur for Ukrainians. – Ed.]

There were no other apartments available for rent nearby.

In desperation, Oxana appealed to the Orekhovo-Zuyevo city administration, asking for help transferring the children to another school. Unexpectedly, Deputy Head of the municipal district Irina Kuznetsova offered her a municipal apartment for commercial rental in the same building, on a different floor. She also contacted the migration office – and three days later, on March 15, 2023, Oxana received her passport, and shortly afterward her husband received his, and the children had citizenship stamps placed on their birth certificates.

"She said: 'We will show them how to work!' And what a miracle – when I came for my passport, I was greeted by the head of the migration office himself, Stanislav Yuryevich Kukushkin, who offered me tea."

The apartment was in terrible condition. It had been used as a storage space. The family had to haul everything out of it, plaster the walls, hang wallpaper, and patch a hole in the floor. A small kitchen and one room – 34 square meters for four people. They pay R8,000 - 23,000 a month, depending on the season.

"But we are so grateful they found us this apartment!" Oxana said. "Yes, it is small, but the children can keep going to the same school and the same clubs."

Why Didn't You Burn There?

In the spring of 2023, however, conflicts with neighbors in the new building began. Neighbors drove eight-year-old Vova out of the elevator.

"The first time, some woman from the fourth floor who was riding with him in the elevator simply started insulting him. I asked Vova what words she used, and he said: 'You told me not to say words like that, so I won't, because I do not want to upset you.' And he had answered the neighbor: 'Same to you.' After that, the woman started cursing at him even more. Another time he was shoved right out of the elevator. He came home upset and for a long time did not want to say what had happened."

One day Oxana asked her neighbors to smoke on their balcony rather than in the stairwell, since the smoke was coming into her apartment.

"They started screaming obscenities at me: 'Coming here from your Donbas. Why didn't you burn there? Why didn't you all just die?'"

The radiators in Oxana's apartment are very old – they barely work, and in winter the windowsills and the section of wall beneath them are covered in frost. She asked the administration to replace the radiators. They were already scheduled to be replaced, but the woman who calls herself the "building supervisor," Yelena M., did everything she could to prevent it. She was also actively discussing this in the building's group chat (spelling and punctuation as in the original):

The building supervisor filed a complaint with the head of the city settlement stating that local residents were against the installation of radiators during the heating season, as they feared for the warmth in their own apartments. The radiators were not replaced.

From the Building Chat:

Yelena M. filed a complaint with the administration demanding an inspection of Oxana's family and their eviction: "Local people are very angry at them. They arrived and everything is done for them, while the people here… we have been waiting years for the sealing of the seams… Is this a put-down of Russian citizens?! In the name of some kind of charity, they had their door seams sealed and were about to have the radiators replaced! Living in Russia, their behavior and statements express a wild hatred of Russia."

"We have never said anything bad about Russia," Oxana said. "And yet she writes this."

In September 2023, on the eve of a school celebration, Oxana was assaulted. She had baked cupcakes and was walking with her daughter to school. The elevator was not working. A neighbor named Andrei was smoking in the stairwell. Oxana asked him not to smoke on the landing.

"He comes toward me up the stairs, I look at him and realize something is wrong with his eyes – his gaze is wild. I shout: 'Olya, I forgot my phone at home, go back for it!' My daughter goes back home. He grabs me and tries to throw me down the stairs. My things and the cupcakes go flying. I grab onto his sweater and hold on. He starts hitting me on the head. And I cannot see anything. I thought: blood is running, and that is why I cannot see. He is pounding my head, and I realize he is simply going to kill me. And I cannot see. I hear a woman come out from the fifth floor and say to him: 'Go home right now.' But I will not let go of him, I am holding on. She tries to pull my hands off him. Then they slammed a door on my fingers a couple of times – and I let go. My husband and Olya came running. Olya was hysterical, she was crying. And I still could not see anything. I asked: 'Where is the blood?' Olya said: 'There is no blood.'"

Oxana was hospitalized for two weeks with a soft-tissue head injury. It took four days for her vision to return.

After the incident, Vova began sleepwalking. He told the psychologist he was working with: "I need strength, I need to save my mama."

The police did not come to the hospital to question Oxana, even though her husband had filed a report. Oxana herself filed a report after being discharged.

Soon afterward, she found out she was pregnant with twins. She was six weeks along, but she lost the twins.

"Blood started pouring out of me. The last thing I remember is them turning on a lamp. Then I came to in the post-op ward. A nurse came in, sobbing, and said: 'You cried and screamed the whole surgery: ‘Save the children!’ But I remember nothing at all.'"

The preliminary investigation into the assault was conducted by police captain Savinovskikh N.V. of the district police department of the Orekhovo-Zuyevo municipal district. She offered Oxana the option of signing a settlement agreement – to make peace with her attacker. Oxana refused. On October 29, 2025, Captain Savinovskikh issued a ruling declining to open a criminal case, on the grounds that no criminal event had taken place. By January 2026, the city prosecutor's office determined that the police captain had been wrong: "A review of the investigation materials and the procedural decision taken established that, in violation of Part 4 of Article 7 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, the ruling declining to open a criminal case is premature, unsubstantiated, issued on the basis of an incomplete investigation, and has accordingly been overturned by the city prosecutor's office." But it was already too late to open a criminal case, because the statute of limitations on the offense had expired.

Oxana received none of the mailed responses from the prosecutor's office and higher MVD agencies.

"When I went to the prosecutor's office, it turned out the notices had been lying in the post office and were then returned. For some reason, our mail stopped working."

Social Anti-Welfare

In October 2024, Oxana's third child, Svyatoslav, was born. The infant has temporary registration but no permanent registration. Only the owners of the housing can register him permanently. And without permanent registration, Svyatoslav has no right to dairy products from the infant nutrition program, or to medical care or kindergarten. Oxana's other children are registered in Slavyansk, so they have a right to education and medical treatment. To register Svyatoslav permanently, she would need to travel to Slavyansk, where there is now a crater in place of the house, where fighting is ongoing, and where the person who issues the relevant papers and stamps no longer exists. Today Slavyansk is, according to the Russian Constitution, Russian territory – but in practice, Oxana is told everywhere to "wait for the end of the SVO." She cannot obtain the status of mother of many children, nor the benefits that come with it.

Oxana has repeatedly appealed to the administration of the Orekhovo-Zuyevo municipal district – which rents her the housing – asking for help registering her child permanently. She has been refused, because there are "no grounds for granting such permission." A woman at an insurance company helped obtain a medical insurance policy for the infant: she reported the situation to her management, and the policy was issued.

Because he lacks permanent registration, Svyatoslav cannot be assigned to a medical clinic. But the head physician of the clinic in Davydovo village met them halfway.

"She said: 'A newborn will not be left without medical care.'” Oxana said. “Both the head physician and the doctor have helped us greatly. It is a matter of individual decency – at every turn, some people help, and others do the opposite."

In trying to secure registration for her infant, Oxana wrote to the Moscow Oblast administration, to the governor, to the children's rights ombudsman, to the Moscow Oblast Ministry of Social Development, to the president...

"I received a call from the Orekhovo-Zuyevo city settlement administration. The woman did not identify herself – possibly she was the person assigned to handle my application. She began, to put it mildly, threatening me, telling me to stop complaining."

According to Oxana, the woman told her that, since the child had registration problems, Oxana had failed as a mother, and that the administration of the Orekhovo-Zuyevo district would apply to the guardianship authorities demanding that the child be removed from her care.

"I said: 'Why just one? Take all three.' She very much wanted to frighten me, but some kind of defense mechanism must have kicked in, because I actually started laughing."

Later, another woman from the administration called to say that Oxana and the children would be evicted from their apartment, and that her husband would be sent to the front.

At the end of December 2025, representatives of the guardianship authorities did indeed come to see Oxana. They drew up an inspection report of the housing and photographed the apartment, and gave the older children tickets to a New Year's performance. Oxana was never given a copy of the inspection report, despite asking for it repeatedly.

"Why won't they give it to me?" Oxana wondered. "Maybe they are preparing documents for removal?"

Removal of a child can only be done by court order, and requires very compelling grounds – a threat to the child's health and life. The administration of the Orekhovo-Zuyevo city settlement cannot be unaware of this. That is why the visit from the guardianship authorities looks like a blatant act of intimidation.

Oxana tried to get advice on how to register the infant from the legal counsel of the municipal district administration.

"He spoke to me in exactly the same words as the woman who had called. 'Take your children and go back to your DPR. Nobody asked you to come here. Nobody asked you to have a baby here. You decided to give birth – that is your problem. I will not advise people from the DPR.' I was devastated."

Oxana was advised to go to court and seek an official legal determination of the infant's permanent residence in Moscow Oblast. The claim had to be filed against the Ministry of Social Development. And the district Social Development Administration No. 8 (the Orekhovo-Zuyevo social welfare office), in the person of its director M.A. Galchenko, who appeared in court to object and request that "the application to establish the legal fact of permanent residence be dismissed without consideration" – which is what the court did.

The Case of the Stroller

"I do not understand what the problem is!" says Oxana. "I am simply asking for my child to become a full-fledged citizen. My husband works and pays taxes. I have three children, but they refuse to recognize me as a mother of many children. How can this be?"

Svyatoslav is a cheerful, smiling baby. He just does not get outside much. Because the neighbors – through a court ruling – have banned storing the stroller on the ground floor, and it does not fit in the elevator. The baby gets out only when his father is home and can carry the stroller down eight flights of stairs.

On the ground floor, beneath the staircase, in a common area, Oxana's family had stored some belongings when they lived on that floor. After moving to a different floor, they did not remove their things. The neighbors asked them to clear it out, then filed suit. The court, in the name of the Russian Federation, ruled across six pages that the belongings be removed and that the stroller also not be stored there.

The matter prompted a full building meeting, attended by the administration of Davydovo village and residents of the building.

"The baby was a few months old. I am standing there holding the baby carrier. People are shouting that we should be driven out. An elderly woman rushes up to me and shouts: 'I would spit in your face right now and put your bastard down.' I said: 'What have I done to you? I just wanted somewhere to keep the stroller.' Afterward a friend in the building showed me what they had written in the building chat: 'They want to seize all the common areas of the building entirely.'"

The banality of evil is often justified by the phrase "I was just doing my job." But in the Orekhovo-Zuyevo municipal district (and the land there is little different from the rest of Russia's vast territory) a different kind of banality of evil prevails – one in which civil servants simply do NOT do their job. The curly-haired woman at Window Six of the migration service will not accept the application. The police captain will not open a criminal case. The mail carrier does not deliver letters. And the desire to "not do one's job" is so strong that some – like Social Development Administration No. 8 – go so far as to defend their right, in court, to do nothing.

For four years now, many Russians have been caring for refugees. They have driven people out of shelled districts, helped with food, clothing, finding jobs and housing. Because, for a decent person, it is unbearable to witness the catastrophic grief of people who have lost everything – and do nothing. But there are also those who prefer to torment their neighbors, to give free rein to a hatred that is noted [as illegal] in specific provisions of the criminal code: persecution on ethnic grounds, incitement of hatred and enmity...

"I always tell the children, when they are pushed out of the elevator, when they are insulted: 'Not everyone is like this,'" Oxana sighed. "Many people are kind, many have helped us or at least sympathized, but there are these others as well."

Oxana had yet another court hearing ahead of her to establish her infant's permanent place of residence. She filed suit again, and social welfare promised not to interfere. But a few days ago, the court notified her that her case has been postponed and is not currently being considered. It is hard to escape the impression that someone in power in the Orekhovo-Zuyevo municipal district is working to deny Svyatoslav the right to medical care, kindergarten and infant nutrition, and to deny his mother – who has three children – the benefits she is entitled to.

An official from the municipal district administration told Oxana, the last time she went there for help, about her conflict with the neighbors: "Let us all just get along. If you do not want to be called those words, become Russian. Because Russians are those who help one another."