A Russian City Promised Cakes For The Local Orphans, Then The Adults Ate Them All


A Russian city promised its orphans cakes and other sweet treats, but then the adults got bored of waiting for them and ate all the treats instead, the Medusa Project is reporting.

The northeastern Russian city of Yakutsk (population: 269,000) pulled out all the stops on August 22 for Russian Flag Day: in addition to a scheduled bike race, local bakers baked 280 kilograms (about 617 pounds) of delicious cakes, complete with images of local landmarks and scenery iced on the top.

City officials invited area orphans and poor kids to enjoy some delicious cake. But then, in an act of meanness that would make Charles Dickens roll in his grave, the adults got bored of waiting for the orphans and ate all the cakes.

Officially, the reason for the adults bogarting all of the cakes comes down to a miscommunication and a scheduling conflict, according to Yakutia Media. It seems that the plan was for the orphans and poor kids to show up at around 1:00 p.m. as the bike race was concluding — that was what was printed in the program handed out to participants. But as it turns out, the race started a half an hour early; government officials who wanted to ride in the race didn’t want to wait and started the race early. That means that they finished the race early, and when they saw all of those delicious cakes at the finish line, they decided to eat them all, orphans be damned.

A few orphans did manage to show up in time to grab some of the few cakes that remained, and they appear to have all hoarded as many cakes as they could, leaving nothing for the vast majority.

One of the disappointed orphans told local media that he or she did everything they were supposed to, and still returned to the orphanage hungry and cakeless (the following translation is approximate).

“We came to Komsomolskaya Square because they said there would be cakes in honor of the holiday. Even though we arrived 20 minutes before we were supposed to, they had already run out.”

Adults at the event were equally outraged at the treatment of the orphans (another approximate translation to follow).

“Why did they specify the time for refreshments on the program if they were going to change things at the last minute? Someone has to take the blame for bad organization”

Being promised and then denied cake is one of the untold indignities Russian orphans must face.

According to a 2013 BBC News report, the Russian government at the time claimed that 118,000 orphans lived in orphanages across the country. About half of those “orphans,” however, aren’t orphans at all; they are kids with living parents who were abandoned by their families for having physical or mental disabilities.

Ivan Sharipov says his mother abandoned him at age eight when he developed cerebral palsy.

“She locked herself in the bathroom so she couldn’t see me. I knocked on the glass door, I wept, but it didn’t help. I realized it was pointless. Because if someone’s abandoned you, it means they didn’t need you.”

Russia has been trying — and failing — to move kids out of orphanages and either reunite them with their families or move them into foster families. That plan has been met with resistance, though; employees and administrators at orphanages don’t want to lose good jobs, and many families don’t want disabled kids.

For the orphans of Yakutsk, having adults eat all of their cake is probably the least-bad thing to happen to them this week.

[Image via Shutterstock/Olesia Bilkei]

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