Putin gave an apartment to a war veteran, but the gift never reached the old woman.

      Only when Lyubov Ilyinichna’s relatives began to claim her inheritance after the death of their 93-year-old grandmother did they learn that the old woman had a registration and allegedly even lived in a modern apartment. Yet, if not most of her life, then at least a quarter of it the pensioner had spent with her daughter Lidiya (Susloparova) and grandson Igor in the old house in Veresniki — at 9 Naberezhnaya Street.

      Throughout, the grandmother stubbornly hoped that her decades-long stay on the municipal waiting list for improved housing conditions would one day come to an end. But the Reaper put a stop to her expectations, taking the soul of the blind and bedridden Ilyinichna from “the dilapidated house where she froze until her death,” rather than from the modern apartment at 219 Pavla Korchagina Street.

      This was told by the grandmother’s grandson Igor Susloparov, who sued the Kirov Clinical and Diagnostic Center on Verkhosunskaya Street, 19 (Polyclinic No. 9) over “fictitious medical screening” and sought moral damages for himself (300,000 rubles), for his brother — who, judging by the medical screening conclusions, was almost healthy, died and was assigned a disability group on the day of the funeral — and for other relatives and neighbors.

      That the grandmother had been registered at Pavla Korchagina was learned by the daughter and grandson at a notary’s office, where, whispering quietly, “This is a criminal offence... You must fight for your rights,” they allowed them to photograph the certificate of registration for citizen Perminova.

      In June 2018, Igor Susloparov — who had contacted the city administration 15 months earlier — was informed about the Housing Code standards and other regulations governing the distribution of the municipal housing stock. He was told that Lyubov Ilyinichna was indeed on the “register of those in need of housing under a social tenancy agreement,” and her queue number was 196 (according to the 2017 lists).

      However, perhaps to cheer the old woman up, officials added that that same year her house had been declared uninhabitable and slated for demolition, so the move might be expedited. If, of course, Lyubov Ilyinichna would stop being difficult and relocate to another hovel. For example, a two-room unmodernized apartment on 4th Pyatiletki Street (house 41, apt. 2), or to take up two adjacent rooms like a lady in a communal apartment at 12-8 Levitan Street (built in 1953). Allegedly, the grandmother had refused such “tempting offers” at the time.

      The document also stated that the relocation deadlines for the house at 9 Naberezhnaya “will be included in the last year — 2020 — of the resettlement program, but may be adjusted depending on the volume of budget financing.” And the adjustments were not in favor of the war veteran, who had entered her tenth decade that year — something the mayor’s office apparently forgot.

      The family’s first attempts to sort things out on their own yielded almost nothing, except that residents of neighboring apartments told them only that “some girl lives there.”

      Working with great difficulty to gather documents about the “apartment taken from the grandmother,” this spring Igor Susloparov filed a report with the Investigative Committee and was interviewed. Only later did he learn that the materials had been forwarded to the city administration because (quote) “during the consideration of the appeal no objective data were established containing signs of any crime.” Therefore these materials are not subject to registration and do not require procedural verification — as signed personally by “Colonel of Justice A.V. Fominykh.”

      So neither administration even had time to be alarmed, since there was no one to explain why, and more importantly how, an apartment that still belonged to Lyubov Permina as of December 2016, while the veteran was still alive, ended up in the ownership of a certain Irina. Moreover, in the EGRN (Unified State Register of Real Estate) the field on the transfer of ownership (registration of the transaction) shows “data absent.”

      However, it is not impossible that the court will side with the now-deceased veteran and declare Colonel Fominykh’s decision unlawful. And that Susloparov’s appeal will draw attention from the Presidential Administration, since stealing from the dead is regarded as a mortal sin, especially when the property in question may be a gift from the head of state.