Russia Freezes From Kaliningrad to Vladivostok

What is the reason for the major heating collapse?

Hundreds of houses in Novosibirsk were left without heat and light. In the third largest city in Russia, a utility accident occurred – a pipe burst. The traffic is paralyzed. More than 160 brigades of public services were eliminating the consequences. The cause of the problems was a pipe produced in 1974. It was replaced, but partially, only 8.5 meters.

The Kremlin said that they see the problem and are solving it, but they will not be able to help everyone quickly. "Despite efforts to update housing and communal services systems, it is already clear that it is now possible to carry out only emergency repairs. Many networks will remain rather dilapidated," Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said. This week, weather forecasters promise abnormal cold in Russia – around -23°C.

Current Time spoke with anti-corruption lawyer Grigory Mashanov about the problems of the Russian housing and communal services system.

– Depreciation in Russia is very high. In different regions, if we are talking about main pipes, they can be worn by 60-70%. And I honestly don't understand why.

The modern housing market in Russia has existed for almost 20 years: in 2005, a new Housing Code was adopted, and the privatization of this sector began. It was possible to improve the infrastructure quite strongly in 20 years, and somewhere they invested, in Moscow, for example, in general, there are few accidents, and in some regions, for example in the Moscow region, everything is really bad there. Although this is, of course, a question, because in the Leningrad region, where the population is comparable in many respects, this was not the case. I would not say that the Leningrad region is less corrupt in terms of housing and communal services.

I am inclined to the fact that, since this is an opaque sphere, or rather, there is a lot of data, there is the so-called GIS "housing and communal services", "Public services-house", but it is so complicated, it is written in complicated official language, and it is very difficult for lawyers to understand what they wanted to say with this or that document.

The Accounts Chamber and the investigative bodies should control it, but they immediately begin to understand when such disasters occur. But in general, the market is very dirty. There was a story, for example, with a fairly progressive management company in Yekaterinburg. They simply set fire to their office, burned cars, burned equipment. And this was in 2017, 2018, 2019. And this is a gangster market in many respects. There's a kind of 1990s in terms of practices. The housing and utilities market is very profitable, the management culture is quite low, so this is a rather corrupt story.

– Russian opposition politician Mikhail Khodorkovsky believes that Vladimir Putin and no one else is primarily responsible for the pipes in Russia. What do you think?

– First of all, housing and communal services are the area of responsibility of the citizens themselves. They choose the management companies themselves. Management companies are those who order services. And in a good way, they should demand. But, of course, there is a question of the system, the management system, the system of state capitalism that exists in Russia, which does not allow open fair competition in the housing and communal services market. This is always connected with state structures, somewhere quite officially the state controls the market, as in Moscow. Therefore, of course, public policy matters in the sense that people also believe that nothing in housing and communal services depends on them, that they deal with their apartment only, that everything that happens outside the apartment is not their business. That is, people do not understand what a homeowners' association is. A homeowners association is a negligible share of the total number of houses. That is, people don't take responsibility for their space.

Therefore, I probably would not say that Putin is 100% guilty. But, of course, it cannot be said that the people are entirely guilty or the municipalities are entirely guilty. Of course, this is primarily a state policy in the field of housing and communal services.

I want to give a bit of a foreign example. For example, there are Georgia and Armenia. The conditions of houses and communal infrastructure are terrible in Georgia. In Armenia – much better. It's just different government policies. In Armenia, the state actively interferes in housing and communal services, in Georgia, this is a libertarian approach: people should figure it out for themselves, but people do not understand. Russia has such a mixed situation, multiplied by corruption.

– And let's take colder countries, for example, the Baltic States. It is clear that they are in the European Union, but they inherited the post-Soviet legacy. Of course, the scale of the country is different, but it is as cold there as in Russia, maybe not as cold as in Siberia, but, in any case, it is still colder than in Georgia and Armenia. Is there no corruption there?

– There is much less corruption there, especially if we are talking about Estonia and Lithuania. In Latvia, the situation is more complicated. Honestly, I don't know the history of utility accidents there. But the state of housing and communal services there is better, among other things, because there is less corruption there. The European Union has invested a lot in these countries, modernized infrastructure, carried out work to improve heat efficiency so that houses lose less heat.

In general, the quality of public administration is simply much higher in these countries, because in terms of official organisations, they are much more developed than Russia, especially, I repeat, Estonia and Lithuania.