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[music playing] male speaker 1:[speaking russian] [soviet anthem playing] alison severs: in 1979, thesoviet army entered afghanistan, engaging in abrutal 10-year conflict which kick-started the afghanopium trade. it was sold all over the worldto help fund the fight against the soviets, but the maincustomers of the opium were the russians themselves.
after the fall of the sovietunion in 1991, russia's heroin problem continued to grow. so much so, that in 2011, thecountry has become the world's biggest consumer of heroin. [music continues] alison severs: with a southernborder more than 4,000 miles long, we're talking about apatrol area greater than the distance from newyork to london. it's no wonder the drug tradeis out of control.
we travelled to the smallsiberian city of novokuznetsk, which lies just over therussian border with kazakhstan, and ison the front line of this heroin epidemic. once a siberian industrialpowerhouse, now this city has fallen into decline, with 20%of its population allegedly addicted to heroin. we'd heard stories aboutex-addicts building coffins to bury their friends, andreligious cults disguised as
rehab clinics. worst of all though were rumorsof a new moonshine drug called krokodil that has someterrifying consequences. nowhere are russia'sdrug problems more evident than here. we've come to an area wherethere's a lot of derelict building that are being squattedby addicts as a place to use and to live. everywhere i look aroundme, there are syringes.
there's more syringes herethan i've ever seen in my entire life. male speaker 2:[speaking russian] alison severs: why areyou hanging out here? alison severs: this area iscalled zavodskoy and was once the purpose-builthousing estates of the soviet workforce. now, these imposing tower blocksare just empty shells. these young men have beenliving in this abandoned
building for two months. male speaker 3:[speaking russian] male speaker 4:[speaking russian] male speaker 5:[speaking russian] male speakers:[speaking russian] male interviewer: when was thelast time you went to see a doctor or a hospital? male speaker 6:[speaking russian] alison severs: sasha pelikhovworks for an organization
called regenerate russia,which helps rehabilitate heroin addicts innovokuznetsk. sasha explained to us that theremight be more to the drug trade than justmaking money. sasha pelikhov:[speaking russian] alison severs: there's a widelyheld belief that a phenomenon callednarcoterrorism fuels the drug trade. it's said that afghan terrorgroups help expediate the
supply of heroin to russia inorder to both profit from their former invaders and alsoweaken the population by poisoning them with heroin. this is what's known asthe golden crescent. it's the route that herointakes from northern afghanistan, throughout centralasia, and into russia. sasha told us that the center ofthe local trade was at the food markets just outsidethe city center. it's where trucks fromkazakhstan are offloaded with
heroin for distributionaround novokuznetsk and the wider areas. we were told to approach thisplace with extreme caution, and not to get out of the car. as we drove slowly through themarket, we noticed gangs of men doing business nextto their trucks. many of them bore kazakhstanlicense plates. it didn't take longto get us noticed. all of a sudden, someone spottedour cameras, and
people started beeping theirhorns and yelling. male speaker 7: why arepeople beeping? male speaker 7: yeah,everyone's checking us out now. male speaker 8: yeah, let'sjust get the fuck out. male speaker 7: let's getthe fuck out of there. let's go. alison severs: there's twopretty snazzy cars behind us. those are the first snazzycars i've seen
since we've been here. probably going to followus and kill us now. the vans have got along theright-hand side of the number plate, had kz, which means,obviously, the cars have been trucked in from kazakhstan. male speaker 9: it doesn'tmean kool zines? alison severs: no. it doesn't mean kool zines. it means fucking naughtyheroin trafficker from
kazakhstan. that's what it fucking means. well, there's still a carthat looks the same. or maybe all the carsjust look the same. ok. we lost the cars and headed backto meet sasha somewhere safe, or so we thought. male speaker 10:[speaking russian] alison severs: it kind of justfeels like walking into a
forest in the middle of siberia,plus a lot of very angry dogs. that one actually did thatwhole, like, err, i'm going to fucking kill you thing. after about five minutes ofwalking through vorstadt, we met this guy. sasha told us he was salvagingscrap metal, which is the most common way for heroin usersto fund their addiction. male speaker 11:[speaking russian]
[dog growling and barking] male speaker 9: what is it? alison severs: because i can'tsee where the syringes are. they're fucking everywhere. opposite the rehabilitationcenter, there's just a deserted building where there'ssyringes all over the floor, and, like, emptybottles of this stuff. alison severs: what's this? sasha.
male speaker 12:[speaking russian] sasha pelikhov: whatis in tropikamid? [speaking russian] alison severs: sasha explainedthat the eyedrops were one of the main ingredients of a newdrug called krokodil, a kind of moonshine heroin. krokodil is so called because itturns the user's skin scaly and eats them fromthe inside out. alison severs: that woman walkedpast us earlier when we
were on our way outto the brothel. and sasha told me the she's onthe road, which mean she's a working prostitute. she's just walked past now. she's met up with a guy, andshe's going to go have sex with him down there. brilliant. that's completely depressing. fucking hell.
with high volumes of drugaddicts comes high volumes of prostitution. and novokuznetsk isno exception. what was worrying here washow young the girls were. so over there, i cansee two girls. one of them looks about 14, andthey've been talking to a succession of men who arestopping in cars at the side of the street. and in fact there's so muchgoing on here with crime and
drug use, you'd expect to seepolice cars and ambulances, but i haven't seenany of them. natasha: [singing in russian] alison severs: the russiangovernment offers very little support for addicts. there are no local state-fundedrehab centers, and so the void has beenfilled by private organizations. they range from centers likethis one, where the addicts
provide volunteer work to payfor their treatment, to evangelical churches thathave been accused of running like cults. oleysa: [speaking russian] alison severs: i hearda lot of people died. natasha: [speaking russian] alison severs: oh. alison severs:[speaking russian] [choir singing]
alison severs: after we leftthe girls, we went to visit the priest of the mainorthodox church in novokuznetsk. i had to wear a head scarfin order to be able to talk to him. spasibo. minister vasily:[speaking russian] alison severs: so this is thebit that we bought in the shop in your church.
and it says, christian sects,how they're servants of the anti-christ. is this relevant in this city? yevgeny: [speaking russian] alison severs: thisis yevgeny. by day, he's a funeral director,and by night, he run the novokuznetsk branch of teenchallenge, which is an american christian charity thatnow has missionaries and centers in over 70 countriesaround the world, and it's
growing rapidly. he told us to come along tomeet his congregation in a remote part of the city whichwas an hour drive up a very steep hill. and when we arrived,we found this. [russian rock music playing] alison severs: this is thesleeping room for the brotherhood here at teenchallenge, which is yevgeny's church group
[singing in russian[ alison severs: this is arehabilitation center for people involved in teenchallenge, which is an american church that'scome to russia. and now yevgeny practicestheir doctrine. i think that teen challengeis a cult, to be honest. male speaker 13: today, ilive here six months. father, son, and holy spirit. jesus christ help me.
[singing continues] [applause] worship leader:[speaking russian] alison severs: this is sergey. we met him begging outside onthe street, and he said most of the people he knewhave been affected by heroin and krokodil. sergey: [speaking russian] serezha: [speaking russian]
alison severs: later that night,sergey took us on a tour of local pharmacies to showus how easy it is to pick up the ingredientsfor krokodil. so these are 24-hour pharmacies that we're going to. you can do this anytime of the day. alison severs: sergey said heknew someone who could cook the krokodil for us. he promised to meet us again.
that was the lasttime we saw him. alexey: [speaking russian] alison severs: alexey is thepastor of an independent church that reforms heroinand krokodil addicts. alison severs: alexey took usto meet his friend, whose family has been destroyedby krokodil. with a drug that can kill itusers so quickly, it's very rare to meet survivors. lyudmila: [speaking russian]
misha: [speaking russian] alison severs: and youbeen taking krokodil? sergey: we have, yeah. alison severs: when didyou start taking it? alison severs: i felt quitehelpless leaving lyudmila's house, but nowhere near ashelpless as she must feel. her health, home, and familylife have been totally destroyed by krokodil, a drugyou can just work out how to make with the help ofinternet forums.
president medvedev has talkedabout closing down the websites that are providingthis information, but the internet seems harder topolice than the border. i can't see any way out forthese people if they're relying on that. drug users are developing new,terrifying ways of consuming opiates faster than thegovernment can decide on any form of policy. the church and the sects aren'tthe answer, but sadly,
they seem to be the best hopethese young people have in a city that really does feellike it's been forgotten.
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