Given Official Silence, Russians Desperately Turning to Internet to Find Out Where Bomb Shelters Are

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 1 – Russia has almost 16,000 facilities which can be used as bomb shelters, but officials are not telling the population where they are lest in doing so they might spread panic. But given Putin’s talk about nuclear war, Russians are worried; and every day, ever more are turning to the Internet to find out where the shelters are, Lesya Dudko says.

            One of the problems is that there are many fake news sites about bomb shelters that are already spreading panic, the Sovershenno Sekretno journalist says; and the most people who turn to the Internet, the more frightened they are becoming and the more reluctant officials are to provide any information at all (sovsekretno.ru/articles/v-poiskakh-bomboubezhishcha/).

            But two facts have surfaced that are causing many Russians to be concerned. On the one hand, it is now being widely reported that the government, in order to save money, has not been maintaining existing bomb shelters for the public since 2012 because officials at that time did not believe war was a serious threat.

            And on the other, there has been a boom in the construction of private bomb shelters for those wealthy enough to be able to afford them. (For details on that boom and the costs of the often prohibitive costs of such shelters, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-real-boom-in-russia-rush-to.html.)

            Not only are most Russians discovering yet again that their government has left them in the lurch, but they are almost certainly feeling more hostility toward members of the elite close to the powers that be who have the ability to buy themselves this form of security when the rest of the country is left without it.