Russia Demands Pensions Back from Chernobyl Veterans
Russia's Pension Fund has demanded that 23 Chernobyl cleanup operation veterans residing in Narva return the state benefits they had been receiving because, it was decided, their registration documents were fake.
Russian law allows citizens, including those permanently residing abroad, to collect pension payments so long as the recipients have addresses on file somewhere in the federation's territory. The people in question were registered in Ivangorod, just over the border from Narva, but it turned out that the address on their documents was the city's Rossia shopping mall.
A press representative of the Pension Fund's Leningrad Oblast branch told rus.err.ee that the veterans, who had participated in the cleanup of the 1986 nuclear plant disaster, had not applied to the correct authorities for their registrations, but to a private intermediary.
Yury Mishin, a member of the Narva city council who specializes in Russian citizen affairs, said that the Chernobyl veterans were not to blame. He said that this was a case of an individual wanting to make money off the registration requirement, and that criminal proceedings had been launched against the woman in question.
Russian citizens who participated in the Chernobyl cleanup, many of whom contracted serious health problems as a result, are eligible for a monthly benefit payment of 44 euros, plus another 35 to 61 euros for disability.
Steve Roman