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Putin Promises Apartments to Servicemen

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday promised to provide housing by 2012 for all military officers who have retired in the last 20 years.

The government has shown increasing urgency in its goal to provide adequate housing for servicemembers, with next year looming as a deadline for providing World War II veterans with their long-promised free apartments.

Putin vowed on Monday to provide 90,000 apartments for officers currently serving in the armed forces and promised that housing would be provided for all those who were discharged in the 1990s or early 2000s by 2012.

“It’s not these people’s fault that the state didn’t have enough funds to fulfill its obligations when they were discharged. But these obligations haven’t gone anywhere, and we need to fulfill them,” Putin said in comments posted on the government web site.

Putin also visited a St. Petersburg district development built in part to house officers of the Navy, Air Force and the Leningrad Military District. He urged Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to make the housing available on a permanent basis as it would help increase the country’s birthrate.

“[Permanent housing] will encourage people to give birth to more children. We will improve the demography,” Putin said.

According to legislation, the government is obliged to provide housing to all former and current officers and their families.

President Dmitry Medvedev promised in May 2008 to provide housing by the 65th anniversary of the end of the war for all World War II veterans, including family members of those already dead, who were on the waiting list before March 1, 2005.

Medvedev pushed the topic again in his state-of-the-nation address, saying providing apartments for the veterans, regardless of whether their names were on the waiting list, was a key task for the government.

Putin on Saturday repeated the promise that the government would provide housing for all needy veterans from World War II by 2010.

“Our obligations on providing housing for the veterans of World War II will be carried out in full in 2010. As we have promised, we’ll provide apartments for all the needy veterans, including those who missed being put into the waiting list before the fixed term of March 1, 2005,” he said, addressing United Russia’s party congress in St. Petersburg.

The process of formalizing documents, which are necessary for receiving an apartment, remains very complicated, Putin said.

“It’s very difficult for elderly people to collect all these papers,” he said. “At the very least, war participants have earned with their whole life the government’s support and participation in their destiny — and not just because they were put on a waiting list on time.”

Veterans have grown restless waiting for the promised housing.

“I’m still waiting for my apartment,” said Ludmila Kireyeva, 77, who survived in the Leningrad Blockade as a young girl. “I’ve been to the local prefecture a number of times asking when I can receive it, but local authorities have nothing definite to say,” said Kireyeva, who heads a local Leningrad Blockade Residents Organization in Moscow.

Kireyeva is living in an 18-square-meter room in a two-room apartment in a khrushchyovka, the ubiquitous concrete housing blocks constructed during the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, which she shares with her 22-year-old grandson.

The Western District Prefecture offered her a temporary apartment, but she refused because she would have to leave at the first request of officials, she said.

Nevertheless, veterans are still holding out hope, especially since Putin has gotten involved with the issue.

“We believe in what Putin has said on providing housing,” said Tatyana Moiseyenko, a member of the veterans’ organization. She added that veterans in Moscow are hoping to move into the new apartments promised by the government as early as next year.

There were 2,408,000 living veterans in Russia as of Nov. 1, said Valery Ryaguzov, an official in the administration of the State Duma Veterans Committee.

Ryaguzov said 18,600 veterans were waiting for the apartments promised by the government, and that 2,515 veterans had moved into the new apartments in 2009.

The State Duma is considering a bill that would offer monetary compensation for World War II veterans instead of the apartment itself.

“This measure will hasten the process of providing housing for veterans,” he said.

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