The authorities of Russia’s Belgorod region, who at the start of the war promised to restore damaged housing, have gradually adopted a much harsher tone toward compensation recipients. According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, after the first major destruction in Belgorod in the summer of 2022, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the budget would not pay for every repair indiscriminately and that assistance would be weighed against each family’s income.
Later, the governor increasingly spoke of possible abuse. In May 2025, he claimed that some residents were allegedly leaving cars in areas exposed to shelling in order to receive payouts. Regional officials also reported other cases: attempts to obtain compensation twice, to present old damage as new, or to describe worn-out structures as war-related destruction.
“If people have left the country, why should we deal with their issues first?” Gladkov said in June 2025 while discussing the restoration of housing owned by those who had left.
Against this backdrop, regional spending rose rapidly. As early as January 2023, the governor acknowledged that there was not enough money to build new homes to replace those destroyed. Soon afterward, the federal government allocated 9.4 billion rubles to the region, followed by another 800 million for restoring enterprises. By 2024, however, the region’s expenditure budget had reached 155.3 billion rubles, while revenues stood at 132.5 billion.
In May 2025, Gladkov said that a further 157 billion rubles would be needed for continued reconstruction. A report to federal authorities listed separate cost items: 33.6 billion for housing, 51.3 billion for utility networks, 15.4 billion for repairing homes and public spaces, and 44.2 billion for social support. By the publication’s calculations, total spending and planned expenditures to address the consequences of the war in the region amount to 263 billion rubles.
At the same time, residents of border areas still face limited resettlement options. The region has no housing certificates of the kind introduced in some other affected areas; instead, people are offered compensation and subsidized mortgages at 2% for homes costing no more than 6 million rubles. According to the figures cited in the article, during the war 401 civilians were killed in the region, 85,000 people were affected, and 48,500 homes were damaged or destroyed.