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A toy dog lies in a puddle in front of the entrance to MSF (Medecines Sans Frontieres) street children center in Moscow
© AFP/File Alexander Nemenov

"Skeleton" is Alyosha. He is in fact 14 years old. And what he "does," in addition to petty theft, is sniff glue and live by his wits, one abandoned child among multitudes just like him struggling by the hour to remain among the living on the particularly mean streets of Moscow.

Along with dozens of other street children, Alyosha lives in the Hammer and Sickle train station and his childhood bedroom is a dank, bleak concrete space behind a cellar window, reeking of urine and glue.

He was initially sent to a state orphanage after his alcoholic parents were deprived of their rights over him. There was little anyone could do to stop him from fleeing that institution and making the streets of the Russian capital his home.

Such cases are frequent in Russia, says Ramil Gutov, a doctor with the humanitarian relief organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), or Doctors without Borders.

Since 2004, the Belgian branch of MSF has been running a program to help Moscow's thousands of street children, left to fend for themselves after their families disintegrated.

Gutov's work includes trying to convince Alyosha and his group of children to come and have themselves examined by medical staff at the day care center MSF runs in the south of Moscow, a place where children can also wash their clothes and talk to psychologists.

There are over a million street children across Russia (in Russian, "bezprizornye," literally, left without supervision), according to official figures. The numbers soared in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Some are the children of homeless parents. Others come from alcoholic families where they still officially live, although they are actually left on their own and do not go to school anymore, like Olya, a 17-year-old girl who spends her nights at Moscow's Kursk station.

"My mother is a trolleybus driver in Pavlovsky Posad, one hour away from Moscow. I come back home once a week to change clothes," Olya says as she squats in a corridor of Kursk station.

"My mother wants to live alone, that is why I come here. She doesn't give a damn whether I come back home or not," she says as an MSF doctor cleans an infected wound in the crook of her arm caused by a syringe, and convinces her to come have herself examined at MSF's center.

For years, Olya has been living on the street, surviving on petty theft and prostitution.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, "the state used to do a lot for children, but this country has undergone a very deep social shock," says Marina Makhtinova, an education specialist at the MSF center.

"The economic situation is better now, but it will take years for the social situation to improve," Makhtinova adds.

Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowleged the problem of street children when he addressed Russians on television last month. He said it was "linked to the explosion of the family as an institution" and for years has promised to shore up Russia's social system.

There has been some progress, says the deputy head of the MSF center, Alexei Nikoforov.

"Since 2002, work has been done," and in Moscow, some 10 temporary shelters have been created, he says. But children continue to be seen as little more than "parcels" by social services, Nikiriv adds.

Meanwhile, at Kursk station, the small community of street children has managed to organized itself on some level. Some station employees help them, like Zhenya, who acts as their unofficial -- and free -- barber.

And some children do odd jobs in the station, like 16-year-old Timur, who has been living here for three years with his grandmother, and acts as the night waiting room's guard, cashing in and keeping for himself -- with the agreement of the station's staff -- the 40 rubles (1.4 dollars, 1.1 euros) people pay to spend the night there.

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