Moscow’s Failure to Build and Repair Roads on which Russia Increasingly Relies Exacerbating Tensions between Center and the Federal Subjects, Grashchenkov Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 15 – The Russian government is now funding barely over 50 percent the amount its own program for repair and construction of roads during the rest of this decade, arteries on which the country increasingly relies; and that is seriously exacerbating tensions between the center and the federal subjects, Ilya Grashchenkov says.

    For most of the first 20 years of this century, the Russian government had fully funded its plans for road repair and construction and ensured that the share of roads meeting standards for transport of people and cargo rose, the head of the Moscow Center for Regional Politics rose (rosbalt.ru/news/2025-04-15/ilya-graschenkov-na-dorogi-ne-hvataet-deneg-5369966).

    But in the last four years and especially since the beginning of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, Moscow hasn’t continued to fund even its own targets for repair and construction and now has announced that it will fund only 58 percent of the figures it had set for the years up to 2030.

    And that cutback in financing has come at a time when the transportation ministry is reporting that “up to 65 percent of all cargo and 70 percent of all passengers are now transported by roads of all kinds, Grashchenkov continues. Traffic is likely to increase even as repairs and new roads are reduced in scale, leading to “’degradation’” of Russia’s transport system.

    This combination of roads in poor repair or not extended as planned and increasing traffic is hitting the
regions and republics outside of Moscow especially hard and it is becoming not only “a major social irritant” in them but also an additional source of tension between the governments of the federal subjects and Moscow, he warns in conclusion.