Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov claims that some locals deliberately damage their homes in order to make repairs at the expense of the authorities, who must compensate the victims of the shelling. He spoke about this during a live broadcast on his page on VKontakte.
So he answered the question of the Russian woman about compensation for damage to the affected furniture, TV and refrigerator. According to him, there have already been cases when local residents themselves damaged houses: people allegedly broke windows and tiles.
“Already now we see that, unfortunately, someone is already beginning to perceive the situation as an opportunity to make repairs at the expense of other sources, change windows for plastic ones, begin to break tiles, begin to break windows.”
According to him, all questions on property will be accepted "depending on the income of the family." The governor cited "huge houses with swimming pools" as an example and noted that he would not be able to help with the restoration in such cases.
“We will restore the perimeter, the roof, glass, doors. I think it's fair."
On July 3, a series of explosions took place in Belgorod, killing four people: one citizen of Russia and three citizens of Ukraine. The Russian Defense Ministry claims that the strikes were carried out by three Ukrainian Tochka-U missiles, which shot down the air defense forces. The APU denies this. Military experts told The Insider that one of the high-rise buildings was likely hit by the main engine of a 9M335 anti-aircraft guided missile of the Russian Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft missile system covering Belgorod.
Gladkov called the incident "a series of loud noises". A video of Gladkov's communication with local residents was also published . "How can we sleep peacefully now?" the woman asked him. “Well, we won’t sleep peacefully,” the governor replied. – Everything that depends on me, on mine, on the operational services – we are in place. <…> What happened now is, of course, an extremely difficult situation. Therefore, to say that I will tell you now that there will never be [this] again, I cannot.”
Prior to his appointment as head of the Belgorod Region, Vyacheslav Gladkov worked as Deputy Governor of Sevastopol Dmitry Ovsyannikov. In 2017, Ovsyannikov was to take part in the gubernatorial elections in order to get rid of the prefix acting, and Gladkov "helped" him to pass the municipal filter. To do this, he traveled with a notary to municipalities and locked himself in an office with district deputies, whose votes Ovsyannikov needed.
On one of these visits, Gladkov was followed by a local media journalist. They tried to take the Lieutenant Governor out of the building so that he would avoid meeting her. When this failed, Gladkov himself came out to the journalist and clarified that he had come to help "save the ducks" in the local pond. At the same time, he called the girl an alcoholic and a drug addict.