Sochi residents hold protest to demand fair compensation for their alienated houses

The city citizens, whose real estates are alienated for construction of the Olympic infrastructure instead, are dissatisfied with compensation amounts.

They claim that in some cases the suggested amounts do not allow purchasing even the cheapest apartment. This was declared by the participants of the rally held on July 31 in Sochi.

Passers-by and protesters were met by two huge red banners, stretched between two street lamps. The white letters in one of them read: "Olympic law is against Constitution. We are thrown into the street. Olympiad is against us"; the other one ran: "Olympic cases should be revised as prosecutor failed to take part in them."

"The appraisal commission offered us some 900,000 roubles for our alienated flat. However, apart from me, my daughter and two small babies are also registered there. What can we buy in Sochi for this money?" Lyudmila Rubanovskaya expressed her indignation in her interview to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

She lives with her daughter and grandchildren in a one-room flat in a barrack-like house. Her flat was appraised at 700,000 roubles, and 200,000 roubles were added as compensation for moral harm.

Andrei Arnautov, a house neighbour of Lyudmila Rubanovskaya, will receive even less – a compensation of a bit more than 700,000 roubles as appraised by the commission for his flat. "I was born and have lived all my life in Sochi; what should I do now? Shall I move to somewhere in the Krasnodar Territory?" he complained.

The organizers and participants of the rally are going to continue their protests. The next one is scheduled for August 7.