By IPS Correspondents
MOSCOW, Jan 15 2002 (IPS)

As Russia ends its long annual festive season many regions face a grim reminder of the country’s infrastructure problems which have been worsened by the cold weather.

Moreover, as last December was abnormally cold and the extremely low temperatures highlighted the plight of the country’s homeless.

On Jan 10 Russian President, Valdimir Putin, urged his government to provide more effective supplies of power and heating to the population.

According to the official news agency, RIA, Putin ordered deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko to provide a detailed report on the situation particularly in Russia’s Eastern areas and instructed that the situation be improved within a month.

During a meeting with the President covered by the state-run RTR television, Khristenko claimed that the situation was “under control”. However, he conceded that nearly one fourth of all the problems have been caused by “human factors” such as low discipline among staffers of the communal services.

This winter, there have been no cold-related crises like in the early 2001, when vast areas of the Far East and Siberia went without power for weeks.

However, many Russian regions still struggle to cope with low temperatures and fierce snowstorms.

For instance, Central Russia is facing its coldest winter in 25 years, with temperatures dropping to a low of minus 33 degrees Celsius in early January.

In Moscow the temperature hit minus 27 degrees and 300 people are reported to have died from the cold, a figure well above the 205 who died last winter.

Though not all those who died of hypothermia were homeless, most people assume they were Bomzh – the Soviet-era acronym for homeless or people “without a definite place of residence.”

During the Soviet era, homelessness was a punishable offense. These days the Bomzh are no longer detained by the police yet the authorities are doing little to help them.

Moscow city runs eight homeless shelters with room for 1,500 people. Yet the figure has been seen as far from adequate with a backdrop of Moscow’s estimated 100,000 homeless populace.

The international charities, notably French aid agency, Medecins Sans Frontieres, have repeatedly called for extra help for Russia’s homeless people.

Despite the vast numbers of homeless people there are no national nationwide statistics on cold deaths.

On the other hand, unusually low temperatures this winter came as a grim reminder that the country’s dilapidating infrastructure needs massive investments in order to avoid major breakdowns. Notably, supply lines failures and power cuts had left thousands of people throughout Russia without light or heat, or both.

Many towns across Russia suffered from power or heating outages. In the Moscow suburb of Khimki, nearly 150,000 people were left without heat in early January when an old pipeline broke.

A cold spell that even caused snow fall on palm trees along Russia’s sub-tropical Black Sea coast. Since mid-December, the Black Sea resort of Sochi, President Putin’s favorite holiday spot, has suffered from repeated power blackouts.

In total, some 39 townships and villages lost power supplies due to a transmission line failure in Southern Krasnodar region around Sochi. Also in southern Russia, the military was called in to blow up iced dams as the cold froze up the straits in the Sea of Azov.

Not surprisingly, some Russia’s northern locations fared even worse. In Arkhangelsk, Northern Russia, some 98,000 urban dwellers lost water supplies. Moreover, heating systems failed in different Russia’s regions due to freezing temperatures.

In Volkhov, near Russia’s “Northern Capital” St. Petersburg, 128 apartment blocks with some 11,000 people lost their heating supplies. In total, strong winds and heavy snow cut power to 54 towns in the Leningrad region in early January.

In Vladivostok, Russia’s Far East City Hall turned to the military to help passengers. Television showed the navy’s Armored Personnel Carriers dragging trolley-buses along several snow-laden streets. Power in areas of the city and surrounding districts was cut off for several hours after electricity lines failed.

In Ust-Kut, Siberia’s Irkutsk region, some 8,000 people have not had heating since December 22. Around 1,000 people lost their access to heating in Djebariki-Khaya in far northern Yakutia, despite minus 40 Celsius cold.

It has been understood that Russia’s current urban infrastructure problems were caused by the fact that during the Soviet era so called “central heating” systems were built in urban areas. Even a minor pipeline failure leaves many people without heating. Moreover, these systems, which pump huge amounts of hot water into multi-apartment blocks, are wasteful and expensive to maintain. The former Soviet government subsidised these expenses almost entirely yet it is no longer the case in the new capitalist Russia.

The Muscovites will be paying full, 100 percent, prices for their electricity, heating and other communal services, Moscow deputy Mayor Boris Nikolsky announced on last week. Right now these prices are subsidised and Muscovites are paying just 44 percent of their communal services bills while this figure has reached 60 percent in Russia, Nikolsky argued.

Facing price hikes, in many regions Russia’s urban dwellers are unable to pay increased heating bills. On the other hand, the country still lacks huge investments needed to replace obsolete “central heating” systems with more up-to-date, economic and environment-friendly alternatives.

The Kremlin tries to tackle the problem. On Jan 8, the Russian government announced that it had clinched a deal with the World Bank to attract a 85 million US dollars loan so as to modernise heating systems of Russian cities.

Russia’s cold climate and the country’s high level of urbanisation require endless efforts to sustain the country’s infrastructure, argues Georgi Derluguian, Russia expert and Assistant Professor at the Northwestern University, Chicago. Otherwise many urban centers, notably those located in Siberia, could be frozen, he told IPS.

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