Heating Shortages in Moscow Greater in New Housing than in Old Because Heating Networks haven’t Been Expanded, ‘Novyye Izvestiya’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 6 – The Russian media this past week has been filled with stories about the absence of heating and electricity in apartment blocks in the Moscow region. At a time of severe cold weather, tens of thousands of residents are without heat or light; but many mistakenly believe that this problem is concentrated in older housing rather than new.

            Instead, according to experts with whom Elena Petrova of Novyye Izvestiya spoke, the greatest problems are in the most recently constructed housing because officials have not been compelled to construct new infrastructure and so older networks can’t support the new burden (newizv.ru/news/2024-01-06/vopros-dnya-pochemu-podmoskovie-stalo-liderom-po-chislu-kommunalnyh-avariy-425888; cf. newizv.ru/news/2023-12-11/zamerzayut-v-novyh-domah-kak-svyazany-polomki-kotelnyh-zimoy-i-ochkovtiratelstvo-425026).

            Because so much new housing has been built in the Russian capital over the last year, the problem of not having the necessary infrastructure to ensure heat and light for residents is greater there than elsewhere in Russia where far less housing has been built and so the burden on older infrastructure is less.

            Not surprisingly, residents of these new housing units were glad to get them when they did; but they now are suffering because officials did not expand existing heating networks or build the new infrastructure that such new units required. What this likely means is that the problems with Russian housing stock are likely to increase in unexpected places.