Regions and Republics Now Facing Crises with Their Own Trash Crises, Not Just from Moscow’s Sending Trash to Them from Major Cities

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 22 – For almost a decade, the Russian government’s efforts to cope with the mounting trash problems of that country’s major cities have sparked protests in regions and republics that they are being swamped. The most significant but hardly the only such protest was in Shiyes.

            But it is not just the major Russian cities that are producing more trash than they are equipped to process. Many of the federal subjects are also generating more trash than they can deal with, something that is likely to trigger a new wave of protests in those areas which are the hardest hit (versia.ru/pochemu-v-regionax-nekomu-vyvozit-musor).

            According to a new survey, the federal subjects most in trouble are in order the Altai Kray, Vologda Oblast, Kabardino-Balkaria, Krasnoyarsk Kray, Magadan, Novgorod, and Novosibirsk Oblasts, the Altay Republic, Buryatia, Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Tyva, Tomsk and Chelyabinsk Oblasts.

            These are among the poorest federal subjects, and officials there, pressed to meet other demands, have not made the investment needed to keep up with the ever-increasing amount of trash their residents are generating. If protests do break out, they will likely now be directed not just at Moscow as was the case in Shiyes but at Moscow and the federal subject leaders.

            The Kremlin may welcome this because it could allow it to deflect objections to its plans to send more trash from Moscow and St. Petersburg to poorer  regions, but any benefit the Putin regime may get from this is likely to be short-lived because NIMBY attitudes are certain to be reenforced rather than reduced by having two targets for complaint.