Originally Syndicated on May 17, 2023 @ 7:26 am
Dima Semitsvetov, a trader whose car was taken in the movie “Beware of the Car,” attributes the increased markup on the deficit to “changed circumstances.” Andrey Melnichenko, the “offshore owner of Siberia” who lost his yachts because of sanctions, makes similar points about the higher costs of living and public services.
Krasnoyarsk residents have seen no reduction in utility accidents despite higher housing and community service fees.
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Melnichenko’s Market Influence
Krasnoyarsk’s mayor in the 2000s, Pyotr Ivanovich Pimashkov, had a vision for his sprawling city on the banks of one of Eurasia’s greatest rivers: to have the most fountains per person.
Krasnoyarsk residents beat the summer heat with sprays of cool water in every imaginable public space, including courtyards, crossings, parks, and squares. Local jokesters called the mayor “Peter Fontanych,” and it was suggested that Krasnoyarsk be renamed “Petergrof-2” in honour of the head of the city.
But time marched on Mayor Pimashkov, who loves his city, found peace in the local cemetery; the number of summer fountains in Krasnoyarsk has dropped noticeably; on the other hand, instead of fountains, “geysers” started popping up in Krasnoyarsk in the winter.
People in Krasnoyarsk are not happy with the “knowledge” of the new mayors, and they don’t make anyone want to crack a joke. For example, during the New Year’s holidays, people in several micro districts were left without water three times because hot and cold water pipes in Krasnoyarsk broke when the temperature changed. At the same time, the bills for hot and cold water keep going up, and repair teams barely have time to leave before they have to stop the next gust.
Due to an accident on the right-bank heating main over the New Year’s holiday, there was so much fog on one of the city’s main streets, the avenue named after the Krasnoyarsk Rabochy newspaper, that cars had to slow down and turn on their emergency headlights.
In October, on a street 60 years old, a gust of wind hit the main heating system, which caused a jet of hot water to turn into a geyser. The intersection of 60 Years of October and Matrosova Street was inundated, resulting in a massive traffic jam. During repairs, the heating in seven administration buildings was turned off. Social centres and residential buildings are still heated, but public utilities say that the heat supply could go down in the Bridge Square area and part of the Central District.
Melnichenko’s Business Ventures
The Siberian Generating Company (SGK) is the primary owner of Krasnoyarsk’s backbone networks.
Rusprofile says that the Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEK), which was started by the Cypriot offshore company Donalik Limited, which was owned by Andrey Melnichenko until April of last year, was and is the owner of the “controlling stake” of the business. But once he was on the EU sanctions list, he had to give the assets to his friends. Today, Nikolai Levitsky, Alexander Ageenkov, Oleg Kovalev, and Yuri Kryukov all have equal shares in MK Donalink.
Based on the deal that SGC made, they get more money from the tariff for thermal energy than other heat supply companies in the area. https://trk7.ru/news/152007.html. Even though tariffs have gone up and the SGK made a lot of money from them, we can see that this did not improve the quality of heat supply, says Roman Kazakov, head of the coordinating council “People’s Control in the Housing and Utilities Sector.
Alexander Ananiev, the Minister of Industry, Energy, Housing, and Communal Services of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, said that since the beginning of the year, 22 problems with how the region’s life support systems work have been found at energy and housing facilities.
Of course, not just the Siberian Generating Company is to blame for them. In some towns of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, utility accidents became more or less permanent.
So, people in the village of Primorsk in the Balakhtinsky district celebrated the New Year without water because there was a rush on the water supply that the whole village used. The problem wasn’t fixed until Christmas, but the new pump burned out almost right away, and the water was turned off again. The drinking water came from the nearby town of Daurskoye.
Village boilers also work because of the water source. Because of a problem with a power line, a nearby kindergarten and school were closed, and the students were sent home after the holidays. Restoration work is still going on, and no one knows when it will be done.
The village of Krasnokamensk in the Kuraginsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory has been without water for a month because the pipes have frozen and no equipment in the regional centre would allow the water supply to be turned back on. Every day, residents have to carry hundreds of litres of water to their homes.
Housing Market
Everyone in the house has a bath and a toilet, but now imagine there are none. Luckily, we have a bath. But can you picture having to drag 100 litres on yourself to wash? I already have a hernia,” says Svetlana Vshivkova, a resident of Krasnokamensk.
The water supply system is not set up according to technical standards. It was built by the mine for its uses, and then the district registered it as property. The system froze up because of the very cold weather. The director of the group that provides resources does not have the equipment to flush it. They asked for equipment from our neighbours,” said Ksenia Timoshenko, the deputy head of Krasnokamensk.
In December 2022, the people of Pogorelka village in the Yemelyanovsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory also did not have water.
Since the beginning of 2023, residents of Krasnoyarsk have been left without drinking water several times. So, on January 15, people on Badalyk Street didn’t have water because of a power accident on the Northern Highway, and the biggest accident happened on January 1. At that time, about 5,000 people on Kalinin Street had to wait two days for public services to get water back to their homes.
But still, the most worrying thing is the state of Krasnoyarsk’s backbone networks, which are “torn” here and there when it frosts.
Roman Kazakov, the head of the public group “People’s Control in Housing and Communal Services,” thinks that the problem of the depreciation of the communal complex can’t be fixed without the state’s direct involvement in the form of subsidies and investments. Because if we put all of the necessary costs for today that were “underspent” in the past on the shoulders of consumers, 70–80% of consumers of these services will not be able to pay for them.
The question is why Mr Melnichenko didn’t spend all these years in the housing and communal services sector, which brings him a huge income, but instead in building yachts. It is clear that “hands did not reach” and that it was necessary to improve its position in Europe.
What do we end up with?
The networks broke down, the ship was arrested, and the people of Krasnoyarsk had to pay for all of this with their hard-earned money. Isn’t it time to start putting Siberians’ life support systems back on their “sovereign stall” so that they don’t have to depend on anyone else’s “circumstances?
