‘The Volga River No Longer Exists’ – and Moscow’s Program to Save It has Utterly Failed, Duma Deputies and Environmentalists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 10 – The Volga, perhaps the most fabled river in Russia, “no longer exists,” ecologists say. Indeed, “the word ‘Volga’ should not be used. What exists instead is the Volga cascade of reservoirs” which flows from one standing body of water to the next, each more contaminated than the one before it, one of them says.

            Six years ago, the Russian government announced a 127 billion ruble (1.3 billion US dollar) program to address this situation, but it has utterly failed, environmentalists and Duma deputies say, with only six of the 121 treatment plants the program called for now operational (newizv.ru/news/2024-07-08/bolnaya-volga-kuda-propali-127-milliardov-rubley-na-stroitelstvo-ochistnyh-431727).

            All this came out at a Duma hearing this week, but what did not come out was the identification of those into whose pockets the money went instead of for its intended purpose, yet another example of the way in which the Putin regime funnels public money into private hands to build support for itself instead of spending the money as intended.

            These hearings are not likely to change that, but precisely because they focused on the Volga and because of the symbolic importance of that former river for Russians, these findings may have a broader echo in the Russian public than any earlier discussion of environmental degradation in that country.