Families of Russian arctic warriors are left in freezing cold
While the men are waging war on foreign soil, and the state spends massive resources on violence and territorial expansion, the wives and children of military men from the Kola Peninsula live through ice-cold winter days without heating in their houses. "This is how the defenders of the motherland live," a local man complains.
Military families across Murmansk region this week experienced a major drop in temperatures in their apartments following a breakdown of local boiler houses.
In the towns that house the region's three brigades, locals complain about ice-cold apartments.
In several places, the outside temperature dropped to minus 30 °C.
"This is a crime against people," a woman from Alakurtti, the town that houses the 80th Motorised Rifle Brigade, wrote in a comment on social media.
"Strange. There was a lot of talk about how we were preparing for winter, how we were ready for winter," another woman wrote.
According to Aleksandr Samarin, the mayor of Alakurtti, the problems started in the morning of November 14 "due to bad weather conditions." A power outage reportedly resulted in the breakdown of a boiler house and two central heating stations.
He assured that emergency crews were working around the clock to install a new smoke extractor in the local boiler house, and that it all would be completed on November 19.
Aleksandr Samarin is a key ally of regional Governor Andrei Chibis and has on several occasions visited Prymorsk, an occupied Ukrainian town in the Zaporizhzhia region for which Murmansk has so-called 'stewardship.'
The north Russian region of Murmansk has spent several hundred million rubles on the occupied town. Meanwhile, infrastructure in north Russian towns is falling apart.
Few days later the heating troubles in Alakurtti, locals in Sputnik, the base town of the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade, reported similar problems. Also a nearby base of the 200th Motorised Rifle Brigade experienced a dramatic drop of temperatures in apartments. Reportedly, several houses had inside temperatures of only about 10 °C.
"Our flats have ice and snow on the windows and walls, and the floors are frozen solid. The wind blows right through the building. The joints weren't insulated before winter, even though we submitted requests. This is how the families of defenders live," a man complains.
The Kola Peninsula is located above the Arctic Circle and weather conditions regularly turn extreme. Nevertheless, the heating systems in the region tend to break down during winter.
Also in December 2024, the military towns in the Kola Peninsula experienced major problems with heating systems and temperatures inside apartments dropped dramatically.
