The heating season of 2015-2016 is coming. More likely it is going to be another hard experience for residents of Donbass and especially for its occupied territory. Informator.lg.ua tried to analyze the level of readiness of municipal service of “Lugansk republic” for coming heating season and tried to predict what residents of occupied citied should accept in the coming month.
Heating season of 2014-2015 in the “capital”
At the beginning of August 2015 there were 13 out of 24 municipal companies working in Lugansk. Basically in Lugansk only those companies that help city to exist work, “Teplokommunenergo”, “Gorsvet”, “Lugansk recycling center”, “Luganskelektrotrans”, “Tsentrozhilkom”, “Operational-linear Directorate of Highways”, “Landscaping Company”. The other municipal companies that are still working are parks, recreation centers and so on.
The previous heating season in Lugansk was the most difficult in the last decade and there were a lot of cut offs because of emergency situation. During military actions at the end of last autumn many houses had no heating, very often there was no electricity and gas in the city as well.
The hardest situation was for residents of Yubileyniy area of Lugansk. The infrastructure was old, a lot of objects were damaged after shelling and because of that the heating season there didn’t start in time. Transformer substation was destroyed and it wasn’t possible to start boiler and pump stations. For the same reason locals suffered the lack of electricity. Representatives of municipal services reported that heating and water supply were restored only at the end of December. It was possible to connect electricity there only by New Year and not everywhere.
There were power failures in other areas of Lugansk as well. On December 8 2014 the boiler house that was providing heating for the center of Lugask was shut down. Power failures also cause hydroimpacts in heating systems, failures and accidents. Breakthroughs of heat pipelines became real epidemic. It’s very hard to do restoration work during winter. So very often there was no heating in residential houses for several weeks.
At the end of January about 60 houses in the center of Lugansk had no heating, they were connected to Volodarskogo boiler house.
There is no sense to analyze how warm in was in winter of 2014-2015 in Lugansk apartments. The heating season on “last breath” and it was finished before the time on April 9 (instead of April 15) because of climate conditions. Despite the hard situation with the heating in Lugansk during the winter of 2014-2015 everything could be much worse.
Sergey Morozov
The secretary of coordination committee of “Civic municipal self-defense” Sergey Morozov thinks that the risks related to the coming heating season in Lugansk are serious and logical.
“Before the events on Donbass I wrote an article where I explained that Lugansk Region was on the edge of technological catastrophes that would be coming one by like an avalanche.
This is controversial statement that there were no technological disasters on the territory of “republics” because the whole last year and heating season was one big technological disaster. For example there was no electricity in the city. They can blame everything on the shelling, but I must say that was not only because of the shelling, but because of the poor infrastructure. As far as I know Lugansk gets “minimum” power supply now.
As for the heating, there were big problems with that also last year. Last winter almost half of the city was out of heating, but there was nobody to complain to. Somewhere there was heating, somewhere there was no heating and municipal services were just saying that was not possible to restore heating. If there were so many houses without heating in Lugansk before the occupation, that would be recognized as technological disaster and there would be a big scandal about it, not even on Ukraine level, but on the global level.
Before the war I was always “fighting” against our City Hall for independent heating that was banned by authorities. Independent heating that was installed in several apartments and houses really helped people to survive. It’s easier to supply gas than to start boiler houses and to maintain the heating system in good condition. It happened pretty often when people who left their apartments equipped with independent heating systems were giving the keys to relatives or friends, so they could survive winter.”
Sergey is sure that municipal services of LPR serve insurgents first of all and representatives of “LPR administration”. So if there is a question who is going to get municipal services first, insurgents and leaders of separatists get them first and local population after. So more likely the infrastructure objects get fixed for the comfort of insurgents and occupational administration.
Season 2015-2016
Can we hope that coming heating season in Lugansk will be without problems?
On “Teplokommunenergo” website we found report about repair works in Lugansk. The fact that there are planned repair works of infrastructure in the city gives us moderate optimism.
There was information in the media before that Russia is sending construction materials to the “republic” used to fix infrastructure objects.
During public meeting of “Council of Ministers” of young republic on September 11 the question about future heating season wasn’t discussed much.
“The Deputy Head of Council of Ministers of LPR” Aleksandr Drobobot reported that “republic” is 69% ready for the heating season. The highest level of readiness have Alchevsk and Antratsyt cities, and also Antratsyt, Slavyanoserbsk and Krasnodon Districts. In Pervomaisk, Rovenki and Lutugine District the preparation work to heating season is very slow.
According to Dobrobot 77% boiler houses and equipment is ready around republic and 88% of heating networks. Gas facilities are 90% ready. The level of water supply for boiler houses is only 38%, solid fuel – 3%, salt – 23%. There is no chlorine and hypochlorite in the “republic”.
69%, 77, 88, 90… do those number represent real picture of preparation work for heating season? We don’t think so. And the data regarding the supplies can be real. And it indicates that “republic” right now is not ready for heating season. AlthoughthereissometimebeforeOctober 15.
The head of “The Ministry of Housing and Construction” Aleksey Rusakov regularly reports in separatists media about preparation work for the heating season.
Aleksey Rusakov
We should also remember that this person was the head of the Regional “Teplokommunenergo” before the war, he was the head of several other municipal companies. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison for fraud and for organizing criminal group, later he was amnestied.
At the end of August this “minister” reported that Russia will help “republic” to prepare municipal housing objects for the heating season. He was saying that Russia would supply materials needed for repair works, boiler pipes, pipes for heating networks, valves, and so on. Later he reported that those materials were already supplied.
Sergey Morozov predicts that there will be problems with the heating season. “Now it will be much worse than last year. The disaster was avoided because the winter was not very severe. Those who use gas will survive if gas will be supplied. Those who call themselves authorities in Lugansk and other towns must provide heating and water for people. If there is no heating in apartment buildings there must be heated rooms in schools and kindergartens and somewhere else where people can be replaced from unheated homes. If there is no gas, it means they must provide wood, if there is no wood, they must give coal” says Sergey.
Sergey Morozov summarizes that occupation authorities are totally responsible for future heating season despite military actions or economic blockade. “I think that LPR and personally Aleksey Rusakov is responsible for everything related to heating season”.
Gas in the “republic”
Gas supply is another sensitive subject for “young republic” that occupation authorizes can face during the coming season.
In August press-office of “Luganskgaz” spread information that heating season in “young and dynamically developing republic” is in danger. The reason is the growth of debts for supplied gas that was created by population that didn’t pay. At July 1 2015 that was at the level of 109.6 millions of UAH.
“Because people don’t pay for gas the company doesn’t get money, so it can’t buy materials and equipment to maintain gas network. Besides that a lot of money of “Luganskgaz” were spent on repair works of gas networks, damaged during military actions on the territory of the region” reports press-office.
“Luganskgaz” also reported that at August 1 the company had 180 thousands of debtors and that is 67% of total number of subscribers. “Because of such high number of those who doesn’t pay “Luganskgaz” has to take strict measures and cut off residents from gas supply. By that moment the company already cut of 775 debtors”.
Sergey Morozov says that nobody has a right to cut off people from gas in case it comes to “republic”. “They claim they got gas pipeline from Russia, so they must provide gas for people. Right now the population of occupied territories should get essentials like gas and water for free. Even during WWII when Lugansk was occupied by Germans, they turned on water pumps for population, in order to prevent epidemics, pestilence, etc. I think this is immorally to demand from people to pay for gas when they have so little pension in the republic” concluded Morozov.
What is the price of coal for people?
It’s not a secret that most of the private houses in the “republic” get heated by coal. Before the war a price of a coal for population was 1500 UAH per ton.
Veterans of WWII were getting 1 ton of coal for free. Also according to “Mining law of Ukraine” coal miners and retired coal miners had a right to get 5.9 tons of coal for free.
Leonid who is a resident of one of mining villages which part of occupied Antratsyt told us that many local people try to get coal by themselves. “The price of coal here starts from 3 thousands UAH per ton. This is a price for coal that doesn’t always burn. I have no idea how I am going to heat my house in winter, I need at least 2.5-3 tons, I don’t have so much money”.
He also says that many locals continue to use coal for heating as that’s much cheaper, at the same time the village has gas supply.
Svetlana Malakhova
“Those who have money got gas boilers long time ago. But there are also a lot of those who only connected gas to a burner for cooking and continue to heat house with coal. As for free coal for former and working coal miners, nobody received it last year” says Leonid.
On August 19 “the minister of coal industry of LPR” Dmitriy Lyamin said that all residents of “republic” who need free coal supply will get it this year.
On September 3 during the briefing for the media “minister of labor and social policy of LPR” Svetlana Malakhova said that about 13 thousands of people in the “republic” applied to receive free “social coal”. She says that now her ministry is thinking about setting a norm of coal supply and that’s going to be around 3 tons per each house.
Leonid says that they really are organizing free coal for people in his village, but local population has to go through much more bureaucracy than before the war and the quality of the coal is bad.
Fire, water and pipes
To summarize we would like to say that municipal infrastructure of Lugansk Region was not in good condition even before the war. The heating networks were losing 50-60% of heat and systems of water, gas and power supply were also in bad condition. Military actions also seriously damaged infrastructure of Donbass. Population of “republic” gets municipal services in the last effort, there is no doubt that it’s going to be much worse in the nearest future.
Even if occupied territories were returned under Ukrainian authorities control tomorrow, that would bring fast changes for the better to local population. But at least there would be hope.
Aleksey Chernov for Informator.lg.ua