Residents of Chechen villages report accounting of animals and poultry

Residents of some Chechen villages report that officials from district and settlement administrations are touring over households and register all the animals raised by local residents. Under peasants' stories, such officials' actions have the aim of subsequent taxation.

"People from the administration came to us the day before yesterday to account our cows, rams and poultry. They told us that we'd pay the annual tax of 800 roubles per cow, 500 roubles - per sheep and 200 roubles per hen," Lyuba, a resident of the Naur District of Chechnya, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"My husband and I are pensioners, and we live from keeping two cows, some sheep and ten hens. It turns out that now we have to pay, nobody knows why and nobody knows to whom, about five thousand roubles per year?" Lyuba was perplexed. "Even in the days of the USSR, there was nothing of the kind. Then, we had to hand over yearly a certain amount of milk and a certain number of eggs, if we kept a household - and that was all. And now our authorities, instead of helping people to become independent, and, in many cases, just to survive in these difficult conditions, do everything to deprive us of everything."