People in the Moscow suburb of Podolsk have been freezing for two weeks. The heaters in many apartments in the Klimowsk district are still cold – and at temperatures that recently fell well below minus 20 degrees.
Shortly after the New Year there was an accident at the local thermal power plant. But the city and regional administration remained inactive for days. As a result, the district heating pipes also froze and burst. The matter only began to move when residents’ complaints on social networks became louder and the first demonstrations took place.
The authorities have now arrested the director of the local arms factory, the head of the associated thermal power plant and the deputy mayor of Podolsk. Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin had the arms factory nationalized. Spicy: According to a report in the Novye Izvestia newspaper, the power plant boss had warned in advance of problems with the dilapidated infrastructure and refused to sign the winter suitability report for the plant. He is still in custody. Guilty people are needed before the presidential election.
This has not improved the situation for around 20,000 residents in Klimovsk. Although the media loyal to the authorities showed Mayor Grigory Artamanov commissioning several mobile power plants, in many parts of the city the district heating pipes are already far too close to the surface, so that they freeze if hot water does not flow through them constantly. The problems are likely to last until spring. The only problem is that after his departure the boilers are shut down again, which means that the heaters and pipes in the houses are finally broken, wrote Novye Izvestia.
Podolsk is not an isolated case. Across Russia, from Kaliningrad in the west to Novosibirsk in the east, hundreds of towns and tens of thousands of people are affected by bursting district heating or hot water pipes, failing power plant equipment and the like. In Elektrostal, another large city in the Moscow region, the apartments have been cold since the beginning of winter. The residents warm themselves around campfires. In the city of Nizhny Novgorod, however, a dozen people sustained burns. A burst pipe flooded several streets in the snowy city center with hot water.
The collapse of the housing industry has now affected 43 Russian regions, reported the independent Internet portal 7×7. That’s about every second administrative area in the country.
The dissatisfaction of the population is increasing. Images of people freezing and protesting are poison for the election campaign. Putin ultimately wants to be re-elected as president for the fifth time in March. In addition to great power fantasies, the 71-year-old, who has ruled for almost a quarter of a century, has in the past always promoted himself on the topic of stability. Although Russia sank into chaos, crime and poverty in the 1990s, he managed to get the situation in the country back under control. The chain of technical disasters contradicts this picture.
The problems are systemic in nature. Of course, due to its geography and harsh climate, the huge empire faces severe challenges in building and repairing the infrastructure. But for decades, municipal housing management companies were also underfinanced. In many places, only the networks that existed during Soviet times continued to be used with minimal repairs.
According to Sergei Pakhomov, head of the housing committee in the Russian parliament, the State Duma, more than 70 percent of the municipal infrastructure was already worn out by mid-2022. At the same time, private housing construction was booming, so that many more houses are now connected to old electricity, district heating, water and sewage pipes.
Given the drastic increase in spending on armaments, the military and security forces due to the Kremlin’s war of aggression against Ukraine, there will probably not be any more money for maintaining the infrastructure in the coming years. On the contrary: spending is to be cut to less than half by 2026.
The Kremlin chief isn’t showing himself to be a concern these days either. He didn’t show up at the freezing ones. And anyone who expected that he would at least address the currently most pressing issue during a conversation with representatives of local authorities on Tuesday was disappointed. Instead, it was once again primarily about his war, in which he was confident of victory and announced that he would under no circumstances give back the conquests he had made in Ukraine.
At least for a moment, Putin gave his compatriots the illusion that he was freezing with them. Two weeks ago he unexpectedly flew to the Chukotka polar region. This should give voters the impression that Putin is also cold, that the president is with his people, said political scientist Abbas Galljamov, explaining the intention of the trip. But the impression only lasted for a short time. Putin had a demonstration of growing tomatoes in a greenhouse in the Arctic. This problem is probably the least concerning the Russians at the moment.
