Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the nationalization of an ammunition plant in Moscow after a mechanical failure caused tens of thousands of Muscovites to lose heat and water amid freezing temperatures beginning last week. Contact online >>
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the nationalization of an ammunition plant in Moscow after a mechanical failure caused tens of thousands of Muscovites to lose heat and water amid freezing temperatures beginning last week.
On January 4, a heating main burst at the Klimovsk Specialized Ammunition Plant in the town of Podolsk, which is around 30 miles south of central Moscow. Since then, tens of thousands of Russians are reported to have no heating in their homes in the Moscow region amid subzero temperatures.
Affected areas include the cities of Khimki, Balashikha, Lobnya, Lyubertsy, Podolsk, Chekhov, Naro-Fominsk, and Podolsk, a map published by a Russian Telegram channel and shared on other social media sites shows.
Other Russian media outlets reported that in Moscow, residents of Balashikha, Elektrostal, Solnechnogorsk, Dmitrov, Domodedovo, Troitsk, Taldom, Orekhovo-Zuyevo, Krasnogorsk, Pushkino, Ramenskoye, Voskresensk, Losino-Petrovsky, and Selyatino are also without power.
That means that in total, more than a quarter of Moscow''s cities have been hit with power outages and a lack of heating.
Newsweek has contacted Russia''s Foreign Ministry for comment via email.
Many residents have taken to publishing video appeals on social media to complain about their freezing conditions. In one clip, people living in Moscow say that they are left with no choice but to warm their homes with gas stoves, heaters, and "whatever else we can find." Others said they are lighting fires in the streets to keep warm.
Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the Moscow region, announced on Tuesday that Putin ordered the ammunition plant to be nationalized because two of its owners have been "located abroad." He didn''t name the individuals.
"We received the right to take control of this boiler house within the framework of an emergency," Vorobiev said, adding that the plant''s boiler room was managed "very poorly" and there was "virtually no qualified competent personnel."
Russia''s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case over Klimovsk Specialized Ammunition Plant not meeting safety requirements.
On Tuesday, the committee said that because of the incident, the deputy head of Podolsk''s administration, the head of the plant''s boiler house, and the general director of the ammunition plant had been detained.
Residents of Selyatino have described the situation as "some kind of struggle for survival," Russian Telegram channel ASTRA reported.
Power outages have also struck St. Petersburg, Rostov, Volgograd, Voronezh, Primorsky Territory, and Yekaterinburg.
Isabel van Brugen is a Newsweek Reporter based in Kuala Lumpur. Her focus is reporting on the Russia-Ukraine war. Isabel joined Newsweek in 2021 and had previously worked with news outlets including the Daily Express, The Times, Harper''s BAZAAR, and Grazia. She has an M.A. in Newspaper Journalism at City, University of London, and a B.A. in Russian language at Queen Mary, University of London. Languages: English, Russian
Paradoxically, the world of the mid 2020s is a world in which countries otherwise rich in energy supply nonetheless have been having trouble keeping the lights on, both undermining their political, societal, and economic stability and decreasing their ambitions for international growth and trade.
India faces a fundamental electricity deficit, with peak demand evening power shortages reaching as much as 20-40 GW by 2027. Meanwhile, in Iran, fuel shortages have already forced the governing Islamic Mullahs to enforce rolling blackouts. Winters in many parts of Iran can be extremely cold, and the commencement of such blackouts portends a possible long hard winter of discontent for Iran''s long suffering people.
Then there''s Russia, which is going into its third winter of war against neighboring Ukraine and which has a history of using its energy holdings as a weapon. Crypto-mining, which is the process that blockchain networks, like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, use to finalize transactions, requires immense amounts of energy to be carried out. It remains to be seen what effect, if any, Russia''s ban on crypto-mining in certain regions will have on the availability of energy generally in that country.
It is in another field however, that Russia''s electricity shortage may have truly long-term strategic adverse consequences. That is in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Russia''s reliance on the Internet to allow access to AI in the first place.
For Russia, the drive into AI has been receiving massive state support going back many years. Russian President Vladimir Putin, smarting over the poor performance of his military in Ukraine and the uneven success of his air defense technology in the Middle East, views AI as a path through which he can potentially challenge the West on more equal footing.
Unfortunately for Putin, his AI ambitions are running directly into the wall of Russia''s unreliable electricity grid. According to Russia''s national grid operator, AI electricity use consumed approximately 2.5 GW in 2024. In coming years, that figure may reach 10 GW.
However, Russia has shown no ability to grow its energy capacity and grid infrastructure to that level. Over the last decade, Russia has only achieved an electric capacity growth rate of 2-3 GW per year. It is difficult to imagine how Russia would achieve a sufficient growth rate under any circumstances, let alone when it is staggering under the burden of the Ukraine war.
The bottom line is the Russian AI story is a cautionary tale for any country with big development dreams. Without sufficient infrastructure and basic energy resources, no such development is likely to succeed. With the demand for electricity growing exponentially across the globe, especially in view of the increased reliance worldwide on cryptocurrency and AI, national leaders need to prioritize energy security in order to accomplish anything as we move into the uncertain future.
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PODOLSK, Moscow region – Residents across Russia affected by unprecedented winter heating outages in recent days have expressed their growing frustration and urged local authorities to restore heating in their homes.
“It’s a total disgrace. There is no heating and no hot water. We have to sleep in sleeping bags,” Yuri, a local resident, told The Moscow Times.
“I have no words to describe how bad the situation is," said Yuri, who declined to provide his surname. "We have had no heating for almost six days."
The Moscow region, where temperatures have plunged to as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius in the past week, as well as the Far East Primorye region, the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, Penza, the southern Voronezh and Volgograd regions and others, have all been affected by heating outages this winter.
In the Tver region, a group of residents filmed an appeal to President Vladimir Putin, saying that they “are freezing from the cold” in the village of Novozavidovsky.
“We''re literally being killed by the cold,” a woman in the video said, adding that they have been sending requests to local authorities since September after their houses were connected to a boiler room whose power was reportedly insufficient.
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