"It's Not the Flood's Fault: Why Water and Power Are Going Out in Russian Cities"
We explore how decades of delayed housing and utilities and energy system modernization led to accidents in Tyumen and Vladivostok—and what the winter threat will be.
Author: Tatyana Rybakova
It's amazing: in Russia, a country with great rivers and vast reserves of fresh water, water problems constantly arise: sometimes there's no water, sometimes it's of poor quality. And not just water—the country's entire public utility system has been bursting at the seams for a quarter of a century now. Why can't they cope?
A stinking story
Right now residents Tyumen They're hunting for water trucks: the city has only 21 water delivery points, and lines form when it arrives. But even this is a relief: residents have been complaining about poor water quality since mid-July, and authorities continue to insist that the tap water meets sanitary standards. Meanwhile, the water coming out of the tap... complain The water, according to Tyumen residents, is murky and reeks of feces and chemicals. Washing with it (and there's nothing else to wash with) leaves an itchy rash. There are dead fish in the Tura River, where the water is taken from.
Experts say nature is to blame: the Tura River, which flows through Tyumen, is part of the Ob-Irtysh River system, which is prone to frequent floods that cascade from its southern headwaters to its northern mouth. The flood wave forms in Kazakhstan, the Altai, and the Urals, then successively covers the southern regions of Western Siberia, flows into the Irtysh and Ob, and then flows into the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs, toward the Arctic Ocean. This year, the flooding was severe due to heavy rains in mid-July. Water from the Ural and Kazakh tributaries (the Tura, Pyshma, Ishim, and Tobol) rushed northeast, inundating floodplain cities such as Tyumen, Ishim, Tobolsk, and Omsk. Social media reports suggest it all started in the Sverdlovsk region, where water washed away waste storage facilities from a poultry farm—hence the fecal smell.
Natural disasters can certainly cause disaster, but what's happening in Tyumen is man-made. First, if the poultry farm waste storage facility was indeed washed away, it means it was built in the wrong place. Russian sanitary regulations are very strict, and floods in the Ob-Irtysh river system are a regular occurrence. In such cases, regulations require waste storage facilities to be located well outside critical flood zones.
The second point is that when the system is prone to flooding, there is engineering solutionsFrom dredging riverbeds to constructing locks, bypass canals, and more, the administrations of the affected areas now claim that dredging work has been completed. However, judging by the results, not enough has been done.
And finally, the Tyumen administration's response. Instead of promptly organizing an adequate water supply, they continue to talk about increased chlorination and compliance with sanitary standards, and are practically drinking tap water in public (probably for good reason).
Why do officials act this way? Because they're not afraid of the residents' anger: they'll get angry and then calm down, but the wrath of the Ministry of Finance and regulatory agencies, who will question their expenses, could very well impact their lives. Because officials have been doing this for quite some time now—ever since they realized that their continued presence in office depends not on the well-being of residents, but on their superiors. And superiors love it when people ask for little and deliver a lot.
Are they kidding me?
While Tyumen was drowning in miasma, the Frunzensky District of Vladivostok was left without water or electricity. The cause was a utility failure. The problem is that such failures have been a constant here for decades. "As far back as I can remember, the city has always had a water shortage," a friend from Vladivostok tells me. The city, which stands not only on the ocean but also along numerous rivers (one of them, the Obyascheniya River, divides the Leninsky and Pervomaysky districts), suffers from chronic water shortages. The cause? Frayed utility networks.
The fact that Russia's public utilities system is dilapidated has been a topic of discussion for decades. So what's the deal?
2005. By government decree fixedThe average depreciation rate of public utility infrastructure is approximately 60%. Depreciation of water supply networks was estimated at 65%, heating networks at 63%, and electrical networks at 58%.
2014. According to Exploration According to the "How Much is Russia Worth: 10 Years Later" study conducted by the audit and consulting firm FBK, the depreciation rate of the country's housing and utilities infrastructure stood at 60–70%. Experts noted that the situation has essentially remained at the level of the early 2000s.
2020. By According to According to Rosstat and relevant studies, the country was experiencing a colossal systemic infrastructure crisis. Heat supply networks were 62,8% deteriorated, water supply networks 64,8% deteriorated, and in some municipalities, the deterioration rate reached 95%.
2021. Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Housing and Utilities Reform Fund, Sergei Stepashin said about the absolute deterioration of the infrastructure by 60-70%, a legacy of Soviet times. He announced the allocation of 150 billion rubles for the modernization of water supply systems and wastewater treatment facilities, but…
2024 Head of the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation Irek Faizullin сообщилThe average depreciation rate of public utility infrastructure nationwide is 40%, but in the most problematic regions it reaches a critical 80%. Of course, I also spoke about the network modernization program.
2026. At the National Housing and Utilities Forum, the Ministry of Construction leadership confirmed that the average depreciation rate nationwide exceeds 40%, and in some regions of the Russian Federation it remains at 80%. At the same time, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin estimated the average infrastructure depreciation rate in several regions at 50%, declaring the need for urgent tariff adjustments to attract investment.
Sometimes it feels like they're mocking us. For twenty-five years, they've been talking about the critical deterioration of the public utilities sector, drawing up plans, adopting programs, allocating funds—and yet the rate of deterioration has dropped from 60% to 40%, and even then, not everywhere.
Is Chubais to blame for everything?
I'm about to tell you something terrifying. It's not just the water supply, sewerage, and heating networks in Russia that are falling into disrepair. The famous, no joke, unified energy ring of Russia, which allows for the balancing of power across its vast territory and is the true envy of many countries, is also deteriorating.
Anatoly Chubais once conceived and implemented a reform of the unified energy giant, RAO UES. Three systems were created in place of the monopoly: generation, grid, and distribution. The main generating capacity—thermal power plants and nuclear power plants—remained state-owned, the distribution companies and thermal power plants were sold to private businesses, and the transmission and distribution networks also remained state-owned. The idea was excellent: private capital would invest in the already deteriorating capacity and modernize it, while distribution companies would compete for customers by lowering tariffs and improving quality.
Competition for consumers didn't materialize immediately—in Russia, it's impossible to choose between two or three energy suppliers, as is the case in Germany or the United States. In Moscow, there was a moment when a company competing with Mosenergosbyt entered the market, but it ended in scandal: Mosenergosbyt reclaimed the market and demanded additional payments from consumers.
There was a lot of trouble with the generation betterInvestments, including foreign ones, poured into the sector, power plants were modernized, and coal-fired plants were converted to cleaner and more efficient gas generation. To be fair, sales capacities were also modernized and expanded. Then came 2022, and foreign companies left. Among them was Siemens, which supplied turbines for gas generation. There is no replacement—Russia doesn't produce such turbines. China doesn't produce them either, and even if it did, it wouldn't supply them; such products are difficult to hide from sanctions monitors. For now, experts say, routine repairs are being carried out, and the necessary parts can be imported.
However, this summer, the war also reached Russian territory. And the Ukrainian leadership makes no secret of the fact that if Russia attacks its energy infrastructure again this winter, Ukrainian missiles and drones will also target Russian ones. Judging by the fact that Moscow, the Moscow region, and part of the Kursk region recently banned cryptocurrency mining until 2032, the Russian authorities are taking these promises seriously. Mining will likely be banned in most of European Russia.
It's simple: Europe is helping restore Ukraine's energy infrastructure. If necessary, they'll arrange a direct power flow from Poland and Hungary. No one will restore the Russian one. If the gas turbine is destroyed, Siemens won't come. They'll have to return to coal—and that means a loss of capacity, among other things. However, generation capacity is already declining: there's no investment, no foreign technology, and no equipment.
Add to this the deterioration of local networks and substations in many regions, the impossibility of replacing many components and parts not only in generation but also in grid distribution. A good question: how many nodes of the Unified Energy System of Russia would need to be knocked out for a cascading collapse to occur? And do the Ukrainian military know this?
Meanwhile, water supply pumps, heating, and sewerage systems all depend on electricity—there are pumps everywhere, and pumps need electricity. A real public utility disaster What happened in Donetsk, where residents, pardon my words, had to use plastic bags for the toilet, could happen again in Russia—and on a larger scale. How are the authorities preparing for this? They're making plans, adopting programs, banning mining... They'll probably also ban sharing information about it on social media, just like they started banning filming the Wildberries warehouse fires. No pictures, no problem. At least for the bosses.
The problem with the utilities sector in Russia is perfectly described by the old saying: "Until the thunder strikes, the peasant won't cross himself." For a quarter of a century, people have been talking about the need to modernize the utilities sector. During this time, only tariffs have been "modernized"—today they are quite comparable to those in Eastern Europe. But while housing and utilities were modernized there, in Russia, heating pipes still burst in winter, stinking liquid flows from faucets in spring, and water and electricity are cut off in the regions in summer. Senior management has been uninterested in housing and utilities issues all this time—they're such a trivial matter compared to geopolitical victories. Well, now it's entirely possible that H.G. Wells's famous book "Russia in the Shadows" will come to fruition. And honestly, Chubais is not at all to blame for this.
