PSKOV, Russia -- The governor of Pskov, an impoverished region in Russia's northwest, says he's committed to rebuilding schools in an occupied part of Ukraine. His own constituents want him to fix schools closer to home.
Governor Mikhail Vedernikov, 47, who has risen quickly through the political ranks, agreed in August to supervise the reconstruction of schools in Beryslav, a Russian-controlled district on the Dnieper River in Ukraine's Kherson region.
During a carefully choreographed tour of Beryslav, which has been heavily damaged since Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine last February, Vedernikov noted the schools did not have windows, doors, or heating. In a post on Telegram, he told his constituents in Pskov that his team would step in to solve the problems.
"We will do everything to provide people [in Beryslav] with everything they need and help them return to normal life," he said in August.
Meanwhile, pupils and families in Pskov, which Vedernikov has run for five years, also want comfortable places to learn. They say the reconstruction of several schools in the region, including in the cities of Pskov and Pechory, has been delayed, creating havoc for some pupils and teachers returning for the new academic year.
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Pskov school No. 10 opened its doors on September 1, like most schools across Russia. What the pupils and parents found was not to their liking: Classrooms were still under renovation, wires were dangling from the ceiling, construction waste littered the floor, and workers were lingering onsite.
Due to the shortage of renovated rooms, the school had to cut the number of lessons per day and hold physical education classes outside despite inclement weather. Parents worry that dust and contaminants from the construction work could aggravate their children's allergies or asthma.
In one school in the town of Kunya, children began the year without electricity in the classrooms. Parents there also complained about dust, dirt, and scaffolding. The problems were resolved after complaints were raised with Vedernikov's office.
Problems still linger though in Pechory. Two out of the three schools there are still being remodeled even though work was supposed to be completed by September 30.
Parents say the remodeling is so far behind schedule that the schools may not fully reopen until the end of the year. Some pupils are required to take breaks between classes because of the lack of rooms.
"The children are not fed. They are hanging around somewhere [during their breaks]. Their routine is upended," Yelena, the mother of a student at a Pechory school, told RFE/RL, asking that her last name be withheld. "[Parents] are very unhappy."
In the meantime, the Pechory school administration has decided to use available rooms at a kindergarten and a children's cultural center to accommodate some pupils and teachers. Others are taking classes remotely.
The construction delays and mishaps are nothing new for Pskov, one of the poorest regions in the country, in part due to mismanagement over the past three decades.
It has taken Pskov seven years to transform a partially completed, Soviet-era hotel project into a student dorm with additional facilities.
Pskov began construction of a 320-room Intourist Hotel on the banks of the Velikaya River in the 1980s but the project was abandoned after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Various attempts over the ensuing years to complete the project, including as an apartment complex, failed.
Finally, in late 2015, it was decided to incorporate the building into the Pskov State University campus with its opening set for mid-2019.
Amid multiple changes of contractors, the opening date was pushed back to 2020, 2021, and then 2022. Last month, the governor's office said the building would open in early 2023.
It has taken Pskov even longer to build a small retirement community.
Social Town, as the project is known, consists of five low-rise, multi-unit apartment buildings and an administrative building with various facilities including a rehabilitation center.
Pskov broke ground on the retirement community, which is designed to host slightly more than 100 people, in 2013. Vedernikov said he hopes the project will be completed by the end of the year.
Ivan Prishchepa, a former employee of the regional Committee for Construction and Housing and Communal Services of the Pskov, said Vedernikov has no business trying to oversee school projects in Kherson with such a poor track record at home.
"If we cannot control even what is being done in Pskov and Pechory, then I have no idea at all how and who will control it there [in Kherson]," he said. "These are elementary things -- you first need to put things in order at home, and only then in another place."
Prishchepa said extensive construction delays are a nationwide problem with roots in the federal law that regulates the public procurement system.
Companies that meet certain requirements are allowed to take part in construction tenders, but "no one checks" how competent they actually are, he said -- and as a result contractors win tenders they have no chance of completing on time.
Schools in Pechory as well as Social Town outside Pskov are being built by Sarmat, a contractor based in Kazan.
Nina Yaroslavtseva, director of a Pechory school, said Sarmat met all the requirements and described it as a "reputable" firm. However, some workers at the school say they have not been paid in full by Sarmat and are refusing to show up, resulting in the delay.
"I have never received a salary in full, only tiny advances," said a worker at one of the schools in Pechorakh who asked his name not be used for fear of retaliation.
"Many guys didn't receive any money, and they gave up," he said.
Vedernikov's office has tried to reassure the workers, saying they would be paid, but Olga Litsovskaya, the mother of a young construction worker, is doubtful.
She said her son and other workers were recruited through a social media post with promises of a high salary of 1,500 rubles a day ($25) but were never given a legal contract confirming the daily pay rate.
"What are they going to do? Go to the prosecutor's office to complain [they weren't paid]? They don't even have any documents," said Litsovskaya.
RFE/RL's attempts to reach the company were unsuccessful.
Sarmat doesn't have a long history on the construction market, having been registered only in April 2019. But it has won a host of tenders, including many state-related, during its short existence.
The company appears to have a track record of problems. According to Russian business records, it has already been a defendant in 16 arbitration cases.
It's unclear who founded Sarmat, and its ownership is masked by a shell company. Its website gives no information about its management while its "corporate" email is a Gmail account.
Russia's construction industry has historically been nontransparent and considered deeply corrupt, a state of affairs that appears to have worsened during President Vladimir Putin's 23 years in power.
Longtime associates of Putin, including brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, have been major beneficiaries of Russian state construction spending.
Following so-called referendums that were widely dismissed abroad as a sham and an escalation of the war, Putin and his government now claim Kherson and three other partially occupied Ukrainian regions belong to Russia.
In a speech on September 30, Putin promised to rebuild the four regions -- where Russian attacks have killed thousands of people, driven millions from their homes, and destroyed towns and cities.
If Russia retains control over parts of the regions or seizes more territory -- both uncertain prospects in light of recent Ukrainian gains -- it would need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars that it "doesn't have" to rebuild them, Russian economist and Putin critic Sergei Guriyev said in a recent interview.
Other Kremlin critics say such a massive undertaking would likely line the pockets of the elite at the expense of ordinary Russians, who may see living standards sink even further over the coming years as Western sanctions cause an extended economic contraction.
A large-scale effort to rebuild in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine could also delay the modernization of schools and other social infrastructure in Russia due to budget limitations.
Pskov's school modernization program foresees upgrading 33 buildings at the cost of 1.5 billion rubles ($24.5 million).
Prishchepa said Putin's new curriculum to instill patriotism in pupils and students will fail if they continue to see things like water dripping from school ceilings. Everything else is "just words," he said.
"Make repairs, that's patriotism for you. That is how you need to instill [patriotism]. Students are not fools; they understand everything perfectly," he said.
