All Able-Bodied Men From a Village in Kamchatka Went to Fight in Ukraine

The Sedanka village in the Tigil District of Kamchatka will be awarded the title “Village of Military Glory” for “merits in the special operation,” announced today by the regional governor, Vladimir Solodov.

The village is located in the northwest of Kamchatka and is effectively cut off from the rest of the world. The only way to reach it is via a winter road. The nearest settlement is 23.5 kilometers away, and Petropavlovsk (the administrative center of Kamchatka Krai) is 519 kilometers away. The journey from the regional capital takes 18 hours, according to journalists.

According to data from the local government, 457 people are officially registered in Sedanka; however, in reality, only about 258 reside there. Of these, 67 are men over 18 years old, and another 67, according to Kamchatka Life, are children. Meanwhile, 39 men have left Sedanka to fight in the war against Ukraine, the governor said. Five of them have been killed, and another is missing, writes 7x7.

Local television reported in April 2024 that governor Solodov had to convene an emergency meeting to develop support measures for the remaining residents of Sedanka. The authorities planned to help those left behind with working the land, gathering firewood, and making minor repairs. “After the start of the special military operation, the men disappeared from the village of Sedanka in the Tigil District of Kamchatka. It got to the point where there was no one left to chop wood,” is how the situation was described on the Kamchatka 1 TV channel.

After the governor’s meeting, in the small village, a monument was erected in honor of the “special military operation fighters”.

• At the end of 2024, the wives of soldiers and teachers from Sedanka recorded an appeal to the governor. They complained that, due to changes in the air transportation market, they are unable to leave the remote village. For a large family, a flight to the “mainland” costs about 100,000 rubles (around 1250 USD), and teachers have to pay 36,000 rubles (around 450 USD) out of their own pockets to fly for mandatory psychiatric evaluations.

• In its report, Kamchatka Life called Sedanka “the most depressing place of all” that Kamchatka journalists had ever seen. “People here do not lead a traditional way of life and don’t even try to preserve their culture. They are just trying to survive. There simply aren’t any reindeer here, and most able-bodied fishermen have gone to the special military operation zone. All the housing stock was built back in the Soviet era, and it’s all eaten away by mold <...> Most of the homes don’t have toilets or running water. Life here has stopped,” reported the journalists who visited the village.