Omsk residents have created a petition against air pollution. Other regions also suffer from these problems.

Omsk has had serious air quality problems since October. write In the petition, residents say black smoke from the thermal power plant's chimneys can be seen from different parts of the city. 

"This is no longer just alarming; it's an emergency. Hydrometeorological and Environmental Monitoring Service (UGMS) and Ministry of Natural Resources stations throughout the city, and almost daily in the Oktyabrsky and Central Administrative Districts, are recording exceedances of maximum permissible concentrations of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and suspended particles. We can literally see and feel the city being blanketed by waves of ash, soot, and dust," the petition states. 

People are demanding that the fuel used in thermal power plants be replaced with more environmentally friendly fuel and that violations that have been recorded by regulatory authorities for years be eliminated. 

"We need the filters (at the combined heat and power plant) to be operational at all times, not just for show. We need the city to switch to cleaner fuel," residents demand.

Since the start of the war, Russian military spending has increased severalfold. However, funding for the Clean Air project has been cut by 50%, amounting to 6 billion rubles, Greenpeace noted in its October 2025 report. Meanwhile, authorities are increasingly classifying data on environmental pollution, including air quality monitoring in industrial cities such as Norilsk, Chelyabinsk, and Krasnoyarsk.  

In September of this year, the cities with the most polluted air won In the "I Choose Clean Air" campaign, officials urged residents of 73 Russian regions to walk and run more, track their distances, and record them as "clean." However, this didn't actually improve the environmental situation: Krasnoyarsk won the campaign, topping the ranking of Russia's dirtiest cities in 2025.