The pollution is a potential health time bomb, causing an increased incidence of cancer and disease for which no one wants to take responsibility, especially the beleaguered Russian military. After an initial surge of citizen activism at the end of the Soviet period, Russians today are more focused on economic survival, sometimes desperately. Those who try and arouse public opinion are treated as clowns and not taken seriously. Life is so hard. Salaries haven't been paid, in some cases for years.
People are aware they are living on a powder keg.
But their current interests are different. The small rural village of Leonidovka sits at a crossroads of two huge problems, both inherited from the Soviet era. One is that Russia has the world's largest supply of chemical weapons, which it promised by treaty to liquidate but now cannot afford to destroy. The other problem is that, before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, tons of chemical weapons were discarded by the military and forgotten, and they are now an ecological threat. No one knows where they are, or how much of the deadly poisons are leaching into the air, water and soil.