When Officials Fail to Act, Russians are Building Bridges, Dams and Roads on Their Own – But These Same Officials are Tearing Down what the People have Put Up

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 20 – Russian officials are failing to repair aging bridges, collapsing dams, and increasingly impassable roads. Fed up, ordinary Russians have taken things into their own hands and repaired or built new infrastructure in the place of what their government has failed to do, especially as it shifts money to pay for Putin’s war in Ukraine.

            The number of such efforts is unknown, not because the people involved aren’t proud of what they have done but rather because officials are so angry and quite possibly worried that citizens will take things into their own hands that the powers have torn down the new construction instead of allowing the population to benefit.

            The SibReal portal provides a survey of several such projects and their sad fate in a country whose government would prefer that the population suffer instead of even allowing the people to take action on their own (sibreal.org/a/kak-rossiyane-stroyat-mosty-damby-i-dorogi-ne-dozhdavshis-pomoschi-vlasti/33402276.html).