From Freezing Cold to Scorching Heat: russia’s Infrastructure Is Collapsing Nonstop

While the kremlin keeps pouring enormous resources into the war against Ukraine and into maintaining its own political hierarchy, russia’s regions increasingly resemble a zone of a systemic collapse of public utilities. Reports from different regions paint a coherent picture: infrastructure is crumbling, the housing stock is falling apart, accidents are becoming the norm, and the authorities respond, as usual, with promises and the phrase “the situation is under control”.

For example, in the village of maloye vasilkovo in kaliningrad region, the problem of rubbish removal was resolved in the most “technologically advanced” way possible: waste, a significant portion of which is plastic, is simply buried in a pit by the road. A country that has for years boasted of its greatness and development is, in fact, reverting to primitive methods of waste disposal.

voronezh was once again left without water due to yet another utility failure. And novokuznetsk was practically paralyzed after an accident: without electricity, heat, water, or sewage services.

In engels, in saratov region – from where “tushki” (nickname of Tu-22M, Tu-95, Tu-160 –russian long range [strategic] bombers – Transl.) take off to shell Ukraine – the situation takes on an almost symbolic character. There, following an accident on a sewer main, the streets are literally flooded with sewage. Residents report massive spills of feces near residential buildings, schools, and kindergartens. At the same time, shops are beginning to run out of drinking water.

The picture is utterly surreal: a country that compares itself to the world’s largest economies and spends billions on missiles, tanks, and war, cannot manage the sewage systems in its own cities.

In the past month alone, in novotroitsk, hot water gushed from the ground like a fountain up to the upper floors of a residential building. In st. petersburg, people suffered burns during a similar accident. In ulan-ude, a pipe burst right in the middle of the road, paralyzing traffic. Similar accidents have been reported in zheleznovodsk and murigino.

russian officials are accustomed to blaming utility disasters on severe frosts, but now pipes are bursting, buildings are crumbling, and russians are left without water and electricity regardless of the season. When such incidents recur regularly across the country, it is a systemic collapse.

For decades, russian infrastructure has operated in a mode of patching up holes. Repairs were being postponed, networks were aging, and the housing stock was falling into disrepair. If the state is unable to provide basic living conditions for its own citizens, then what is this entire structure actually built on?