Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 9 – As winter sets in, the Moscow media has routinely reported how Ukrainian drone attacks have left some Russians without hot water; but the center has largely ignored a much larger problem: the way in which decaying infrastructure has left the population in some of the coldest parts of the country without heat and without water.
The Horizontal Russia portal, which covers developments in Russia beyond Moscow’s ring road reports that since October 1, there have been “a minimum of 123 occasions” when residents have been left without heat and water because officials have not addressed the problems of aging infrastructure (semnasem.org/articles/2025/12/09/k-zime-gotovy).
The portal was explicit that it had not included in this number losses as a result of drone attacks or other military actions connected with the war in Ukraine. Had it done so, the figure would have been much larger and the number of Russian residents adversely affected higher as well.
Moscow and regional officials earlier declared that they were ready for what Russians call “the heating season,” but these breakdowns which have affected hundreds of thousands of residents of the Russian Federation show that this year in particular, as money is taken away from such work for Putin’s war in Ukraine, that simply isn’t true.
The absence of heat in many apartment blocs and public institutions have left many Russians suffering with some becoming ill as a result, and without heat, pipes have frozen, something that has left these same people without water hot or cold and damaged infrastructure still further.
What is infuriating many residents, Horizontal Russia says, is that they are now paying ever more for communal services such as heat and water but are getting ever less good service, all despite the bombastic claims of Putin regime officials that everything is under control and that they should be calm because the war in Ukraine is proceeding so successfully.
No comments:
Post a Comment