Giant cockroaches drove a Muscovite out: tenant sues over deposit after failed pest control

A rental situation in central Moscow

In Moscow, a young sound engineer was forced to terminate the lease of a one-bedroom apartment near Patriarch's Ponds early due to a mass appearance of giant insects. The tenant, who was renting the apartment for 100,000 rubles a month from a creative family, encountered cockroaches whose size, according to him, was comparable to a mouse. Although the owners reimbursed the costs of traps and pest control services, the problem was not solved, and the insects kept appearing in the apartment.

Deposit dispute and court prospects

At the end of September, the tenant notified the landlady of his decision to move out and sent an official notice of lease termination by mail. However, the owner of the apartment failed to show up for the move-out inspection, refused to return the 99,000-ruble deposit, and stopped communicating with the tenant. The man has now hired a lawyer and plans to go to court to recover not only the deposit amount but also interest for the period it was withheld, as provided by law in such violations. This was reported by the Telegram channel Baza.

The insects' characteristics and context

The exact species of insects that infested the apartment has not yet been identified. Earlier, in August, residents of the Moscow region reported the appearance of large American cockroaches up to five centimeters long in warm basements, cellars, and greenhouses of the region. In the case of the apartment near Patriarch's Ponds, it is assumed that an exotic species may be involved, which somehow spread into the building; however, no official biological examination of this particular case has been published in open sources. The cockroach species in the apartment near Patriarch's Ponds has not yet been identified.