Since the end of last year, people have been constantly writing to me by email, on Twitter, and in Facebook comments: why are you staying silent about the mass dysentery outbreak in Moscow kindergartens? Cover the story— the media are keeping quiet, there is no information anywhere, even though hundreds of children have been hospitalized.
Indeed, I googled it several times and saw the same thing: a huge number of posts on forums and very little in the media. There have been no detailed reports in the press.
City Hall is silent and is clearly devoting major resources to make sure everyone else stays silent too.
An outrageous situation. A poisoning outbreak on this scale is a national-level emergency. As we know, food for Moscow kindergartens is supplied by entities linked to none other than “Putin’s chef,” Yevgeny Prigozhin. That, frankly, makes the situation even more scandalous: Putin’s associate got a monopoly on food for schools and kindergartens and profits from it. And while profiting, he is poisoning children. But everyone stays silent.
Neither Sobyanin nor the ministers in the Moscow city government have said a single word.
I am very glad that Lyubov Sobol (ACF’s chief expert on Prigozhin, and Prigozhin himself has acknowledged her work) has taken up this issue. She found and studied mountains of medical records. She interviewed dozens of victims. She compiled a map of the childcare institutions where mass dysentery infections occurred. In effect, she has put together an indictment that fully proves:
- Prigozhin’s companies supplied substandard food to kindergartens; - this led to mass poisonings; - Sobyanin’s City Hall is desperately covering it up and pretending nothing happened.
Support Sobol and her investigation. Help spread it.
Especially since there is already a detective-story-like subplot involving surveillance.
Lyubov will be filing a class-action lawsuit against Prigozhin’s companies and the Moscow Departments of Education and Health, representing the victims’ interests. This is important work—let the “chef” at least pay compensation to those he poisoned.