Suffering from Moscow

The governor found out about freezing cities from social networks. The federal authorities hide the scale of the disaster

Numerous cases of disconnecting heating recorded throughout the country in the early days of January, in the midst of frost, are already not surprising Russians: they are used to it. For example, in Yekaterinburg, public utilities decided to repair the boiler room in the middle of winter. As a result, residents of the Chkalovsky district of the Ural capital (three hundred houses) remained with cold batteries. In Primorye, a different problem: due to the accident that happened on January 9, 6 thousand residents of the find freeze .

This happens every year, but this winter the traditional Russian problem has already been selected to the capital itself: the nearest suburbs, and even some areas of Moscow freeze.

In the focus of the attention of the authorities was Podolsk - a millionaire adjacent to Moscow (even a light metro branch was laid there). Rather, one of his microdistricts is Klimovsk. From January 4, local residents are waiting for heat to return to their homes. The reason for the heating is disconnected was an accident at the local boiler room, which is located on the territory of the cartridge plant. Due to the accident, about 30 thousand people were left without heating. This despite the fact that at night the temperature in the first days after the accident dropped to –28 degrees.

In addition, electricity was periodically disconnected in injured houses - the networks could not withstand the increased load; That is, residents were not able to use heaters.

Fasting people desperately went to the picket and began to collect signatures demanding to restore heat supply as soon as possible. A few days after the accident, the city finally introduced a local emergency and deployed a temporary accommodation point where it was possible to get blankets and heaters. On January 7, the Governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov reported that the operational headquarters had deployed in Klimovsk and managed to return one of the boilers of the failed boiler room. According to the official’s report, heating was restored in dozens of houses, but the problem has not yet been solved so far.

This is amazing, but the regional authorities learned about what is happening in Klimovsk from social networks. According to the official version, the leadership of CJSC Klimovsky Specialized Patron Plant allegedly hid the accident, and even did not succeed in getting to the plant, because this is a regime object. As previously reported by the Prochrevsky telegram channel "Brief", the owners of the plant and the boiler room are abroad, but on January 9, employees of the Investigative Committee detained the head of the boiler room and general director of the plant. On the fact of the incident, the UK opened a criminal case under Article 238 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (the provision of services that do not meet security requirements).

A few days after the accident in Klimovsk, the governor announced that the boiler room worked “out of hand”, and laid all the blame for what happened to the management of the enterprise.

Yesterday's decision of Putin, the boiler room together with the plant will be nationalized. As of the evening of January 9, the heating was returned to 80% of affected houses. The work continues.

Interestingly, the head of the region calls the collapse in Podolsk a “private case”, although tens of thousands of people still remain without heat throughout the region. Under the blow were Khimki, Lobnya, Balashikha, Lyubertsy, Elektrostal, Dmitrov, Sergiev Posad, Shchelkovo and other cities. In many of them, entire areas freeze, and residents publish photos of broken pipes and icy enters on social networks. At the beginning of the month, even the north-east of Moscow hit: as the Ministry of Emergencies reported , on the morning of January 4, a fire occurred at the transformer substation, as a result of which about 20 residential buildings were left without heating, but all of them were transferred to a reserve power supply scheme. As the Moscow city economy service reported , residents of the Otradnoye, Bibirevo, North and South Medvedkovo districts were injured. In social networks, they also wrote about the disconnection of heat and light in Altufevo. All this is the result of wear of pipes and accidents in boiler houses.

On January 8, a video message recorded by residents of the Moscow Region Voskresensk appeared on the Web. Residents of at least 4 multi -storey buildings turned to Vladimir Putin and Governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov demanding to return heating to their house. The woman who spoke on behalf of the audience stated that "the reconstruction of the city boiler house is transferred from year to year, and the boilers, meanwhile, exhausted their resource."

“We freeze. In apartments, the temperature is 11–12 degrees. At the moment, I have a temperature of 6 degrees in my room. Tell me, how can you survive at such a temperature? No words! I want to say, we do not live, but exist. And so we ask the leadership to pay attention to us. The Voskresensk administration knows all our problems, as they said: “We are aware, we have everything under control.” And the sense? Nothing changes from this! ”Speaker says. As the information of the regional prosecutor’s office, at least ten houses of Voskresensk broke through the pipes and flooded the entrances. In them, a water supply system froze. On the same day, the department reported that "the necessary repair work was carried out and the heat supply regime was restored." Despite this, residents of the city continue to complain about the cold in houses. On Tuesday, January 9, they gathered for a folk gathering and sent appeals to the president’s reception, the United Russia office and the Investigative Committee.

Everyone is trying to cope with frosts in different ways: those who have electricity or gas use heaters or try to heat the apartment, including gas burners. Someone is leaving for friends and relatives. In Solnechnogorsk, the victims of the heating crisis recorded an appeal to Putin, and in Selyatino the Naro-Fominsky district addressed a similar video to the governor Vorobyov. In Lytkarino, the victims build bonfires on the streets to bask.

A separate story takes place in Elektrostal, where interruptions in heating began a few years ago.

In December 2023, the residents of the Vostochny district asked Putin for help, saying that for the third year the local boiler room has been interrupted, and since October last year, heating has been regularly disconnected in their homes, despite the fact that people are paying regularly.

“It is not possible to achieve justice in any way. [In response] for all letters to your “Chancellery”, to the city administration, the same unsubscriptions come to the regional administration. The residents have patience. It is impossible to live. In apartments, the temperature will not rise above 15 degrees. Children are constantly sick, it is cold in schools, ” the person says on the video.

As a result, the problem has not been solved , and residents of the district have been living without heating for more than a month. On January 9, social networks published a video shot by the electric starters themselves: on these frames they burn a fire near a residential building, ask for help and shout "freezing!"

The Moscow Region prosecutor’s office conducts massive checks throughout the region and is looking for guilty.

“ In connection with the violations of federal legislation, the heads of urban districts and the heads of resource-supplying companies were introduced, 26 representations were made, the issue of bringing the perpetrators to administrative responsibility for violation of the standards for providing public services is being decided,” the telegram channel of the security forces reports.

The federal authorities, however, try not to focus on the scale of the disaster. Commenting on events in Klimovsk, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that one reason for mass accidents is abnormal frosts, and the second is “the dilapidated state of a certain part of the housing and communal services systems”, emphasizing that “it is impossible to update all the pipes, and the housing and communal services are impossible”.