Millions of Russians freezing

Putin's propaganda reports Europe  freezing to death without Russian gas. More than 7% of the population lives in houses without heating. Peripheral regions are in trouble. War expenses nullify any attempt to warm the country's body and soul.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - State propaganda in Russia keeps repeating that people are suffering from the cold, due to the interruption of Russian gas supplies, not to mention the Ukrainians whose power plants have been destroyed by Russian bombing.

TV presenter Vladimir Solov'ev spreads information about 'bureaucrats and deputies of EU institutions, who are freezing in their offices'. On channel 360tv, it is reported that 'the British are freezing to death in their beds' and Russia24 claims that 'in Europe they try to heat themselves with primitive methods, feeding stoves with straw'.

In truth, it is precisely the Russian citizens who go through the winter in increasingly precarious conditions, due to the lack of maintenance of heating services, which require continuous care and feeding, which are now very deficient.

Russian teacher Irina Sošnikova from the Novgorod region in northern European Russia launched an appeal on her Facebook page: 'Friends, help me out of charity with heating wood! The machine for transporting and crushing the wood costs more than 10 thousand roubles [129 euro], and I am unable to hire someone to take the logs home and sort them out'.

Irina is 64 years old and lives in the village of Lyčkovo, in an old country house where no public service is available, and she used her now deceased mother's pension to buy wood. Throughout 2022, spontaneous collections were organised via social networks to help elderly and lonely people collect wood, and the families of reservists sent to Ukraine were promised help from the institutions, all to an ever insufficient extent.

In addition to the difficulties of the city dwellers themselves, due to the ever-increasing number of heating system failures, it is the many people in Russia who live in the peripheral areas who are in crisis. Irina's home has not even been recognised as suitable, but she has nowhere else to go.

According to data from the 2020 national census, more than 7 % of the Russian population lives in houses without heating, using fireplaces and stoves: that is more than 10 million people.

Even in the Adygeya republic of the Caucasus, 1 in 10 people heats with wood, and higher percentages are found in the northernmost areas such as the Kostroma region, Novgorod and in Karelia, on the border with Finland. Suffering the most are the inhabitants of Siberia and the Far East, where almost half of the inhabitants depend on stoves.

There is often a lack of a common gas network, as in Tuva and Buryatia, where even with funds available it is impossible to install autonomous heating. Fire hazards in homes are very frequent in these areas.

As late as August 2021, the governor of Tuva, Vladislav Kovalyg, had personally asked Putin to include the region in the national gasification programme.

Fuelling stoves with coal, which is cheaper than wood, also means breathing toxic gases directly into the house, which can lead to serious illnesses, but Gazprom has been told that it would be too expensive to bring the gas to Tuva.

In Buryatia, the locals have already made several appeals to Governor Aleksej Tsydenov, because the wood provided to the families of the many fallen in Ukraine is not enough for everyone, and no other form of assistance is seen.

Parents send their children to orphanages, where there is central heating, just to avoid freezing to death, as they do not have the money for wood or coal, according to the Novosibirsk charity foundation 'City of the Sun', which helps families in this kind of difficulty.

 "Many people think," says director Marina Aksenova, "that this is generous help from the state, but they do not realise that keeping children in these facilities costs the community even more than the missing loads of wood, in addition to the detachment and psychological trauma it causes in them.

Various associations are trying to support Russian families in the winter frost, but the war expenses are nullifying any attempt to warm the body and soul of Russia.

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