Infrastructure Inherited from Soviet Times Now Falling Apart More Rapidly than It is Being Repaired, Leading to Ever More Technogenic Disasters

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 28 – Moscow officials concede that technogenic disasters in Russia are happening at an ever-increasing rate primarily because so much of Russia’s infrastructure is left over from Soviet times and those responsible for its upkeep aren’t fixing it as fast as it is falling apart, according to an investigation by the Continuation Follows portal.
    Unless the Russian government changes course radically and soon, this means that the current record levels of elevator accidents, dam collapses, airplane accidents and other such disasters will continue to grow and at an ever-increasing rate, the portal’s findings suggest (prosleduet.media/details/utility-breakdowns/).
    The Continuation Follows portal notes that between 2018 and 2023, there were more than 330 elevator disasters which claimed 129 lives, the most widely publicized of these infrastructure disasters but hardly the most frequent. In only two months at the end of 2023 and the first of 2024, there were “at a minimum” 557 building collapses with more deaths as well.
    Indeed, the portal says, when winter begins and puts additional strains on housing and planes, accidents increase. This has sparked a bigger reflection among Russians: The country, their leader says, is ready for war; but it is never ready for winter even though the first doesn’t come that often and the latter comes ever year.
    Experts inside the government and out say that the reason things are heading south is that the country isn’t repairing the aging Soviet-era infrastructure which must be fixed or even replaced. According to one study, 58 percent of the pipes require replacement, but they are now being replaced at a rate so low that the total needing replacement is growing.
    The portal notes that similar problems exist in all of the infrastructure of the country and points out that those who built these facilities in Soviet times warned that even the best of their work would have to be replaced in 25 to 50 years. That time has now arrived, but the Kremlin acts as if it can ignore this reality. After all, it has other priorities, above all the war in Ukraine.