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| 'Nobody Listens to Us.' People in Donetsk Survive Without Water, Complaints Don't Help |
| 2025-01-24 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. On V Kontakte (Russian Facebook), some acquaintances over the years have complained repeatedly about the lack of water, one young woman saying they often are reduced to bathing using a soup ladle, the flow is so constricted. This has been going on for almost ten years now. by Olga Borisova [REGNUM] Residents of Kirovsky, the longest and most densely populated district of Donetsk, gathered again on January 21 to meet with city officials and utility service representatives. Some streets in the district, especially those with multi-story buildings, have been without water for almost a month. People have to buy and carry bottles of water to their upper floors — otherwise they can’t even wash their dishes. Living without water is no exaggeration. While in some houses (usually on the lower floors) a thin trickle appears at least every other day, in others you can't get a drop from the tap. Residents of Kirov, Karl Marx, Gazeta Komsomolets Donbassa and other neighboring streets told journalists of the publication Bloknot Donetsk : water barely flows only in basements, there has been none in apartments since December, and appeals to authorities do not help. "Nobody can hear us! " one of the locals exclaims in the video. "Look who's standing here: women, children, and there's still no water..." “And nearby we have a school, two hospitals...” adds another woman. Back in December, on the eve of the holidays, the Regnum news agency wrote that the first deputy chairman of the government of the Donetsk People's Republic, Andrey Chertkov, promised during a direct line that the situation, which had long been hopelessly catastrophic, should improve by the New Year - water will flow to the homes of Donetsk residents without interruption during the holidays. However, the miracle did not happen. The authorities warned residents of Donetsk and Makeyevka that they needed to urgently stock up on water. The turbid, yellow liquid, unsuitable for anything but the most basic household needs, stopped flowing from the taps of even those who, according to the schedule of the DPR's main water supply operator, were supposed to have it. "The water supply schedule is every other day, they turn it on for a few hours, " Elena, a resident of the Kirovsky district , told IA Regnum . "But even with this schedule, the water does not reach everyone. Residents of the upper floors of multi-story buildings suffer especially. And if the elevator doesn't work, it's a disaster." The same situation, the woman continues, is in all areas of the city. At the same time, in areas that suffered less from enemy shelling, they have at least begun to replace the pipes. But Kirovsky, Petrovsky, Kievsky and Kuibyshevsky are not even in the plans “until the situation normalizes.” "It is impossible to wash yourself normally, clean, wash dishes and do laundry. We go to stores separately for drinking water. Not only do we have to carry technical water, we also have to bring drinking water. And for those who have small children or sick elderly people, it is hell," says Elena. THE SOURCES ARE EXHAUSTED, THERE IS NOWHERE TO GET WATER Donetsk's water problems are not being solved. They will not be solved in the coming days and months, says Bloknot Donetsk journalist Alexey Rutskoy , who is actively working on this topic. He learned from his sources that Donetsk's troubles are much more serious than is commonly thought. Almost all sources from which the city received water have now been exhausted. "Quarries, lakes, reservoirs - they are all dry, everything is exhausted. I contacted the Ministry of Construction, but did not receive a meaningful answer. We are now dependent on the Don-Donbass water pipeline, but only 20% of the water volumes that the Donetsk agglomeration needs is supplied. This is not only Donetsk, but also a number of industrial cities around it, which were supplied by the Seversky Donets-Donbass water pipeline from the Dnieper built by Stalin. The Ukrainians blocked it, now we have a problem with water everywhere,” Rutskoy told IA Regnum . Two dry summers and a hastily built water pipeline that supplies water only to those located near the water supply points have only worsened the problem, the journalist explains. "Water is not supplied around the clock, the pipes rust at a Stakhanovite pace, and when water is supplied, there are breaks. There is no one to fix them: there is one team for the Kirovsky district. It seems to be no secret to anyone that in 2022, utility workers were mobilized," adds the interlocutor of IA Regnum . It turns out that local officials really have nothing to say to the people: employees of Voda Donbassa, the city administration, and the district administration were present at the meeting on January 21, but no dialogue took place. At the same time, in mid-January, meeting with residents of the Pobeda microdistrict — the same long-suffering Kirovsky district — the first deputy director of the Donetsk branch of the State Unitary Enterprise of the DPR "Voda Donbassa" Yaroslav Kapustin admitted that there really is only one repair team for the entire district. And the first deputy general director of "Voda Donbassa" Sergey Mokry claimed: the volumes of incoming water are really catastrophically decreasing, because "there is a problem with the sources." In his article, Alexey Rutskoy cited the words of the meeting participants who, in despair, planned to turn to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin for help. PAYMENTS FOR DANGEROUS RUST In general, Donetsk's water problems are not a month or even a year old. Back in the fall of 2024, the editorial staff of IA Regnum spoke with residents of the village of Lidiyevka, who have been living without central water supply for two years - after the destruction of the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal during the fighting. Elderly residents of the village told how they have to survive: collecting rainwater and waiting for a “barrel” of water, which is brought by volunteers once a week. And at the end of last summer, the situation was aggravated by the lifting of the moratorium on water supply payments introduced by the republic's authorities in the spring of 2022. People began receiving payment notices, and immediately after them, debts, which were also issued retroactively. Residents of Donetsk, Gorlovka, Ilovaisk, Yasinovataya, Makeyevka and other cities of the DPR began to receive huge amounts of money to pay - even in those settlements where there was no water since March 2022. The agency's interlocutors then said: they are not going to pay for water that is not there under any circumstances, but they will definitely keep the bills - for future trials. And even in the houses and apartments that were lucky enough to have running water, things are not so smooth. The water that miraculously reached the apartments of Donetsk residents through pipes that had not been repaired for a long time turned out to be a "cloudy orange liquid" that not only cannot be used for cooking or hygiene, but even for washing and other household chores. The authorities denied this problem. Andrey Chertkov stated that the water "meets the standards of the technical regulations in an emergency situation at the exit from the filtration station." Donetsk residents themselves nicknamed the cloudy and, quite possibly, poisonous substance "Nutella." Elena, a resident of the Kirovsky district of Donetsk, is sure that nothing will change until the Seversky Donetsk-Donbass channel is launched, and this can only happen after the liberation of Slavyansk. "Now they promise to switch to daily supply by the hour, they try to supply from 5 to 9 p.m. It doesn't always work out. And if they switch to a daily schedule, there will be even less. Until they rebuild Seversky Donets - Donbass, the situation will not improve," said the interlocutor of IA Regnum. |
| Posted by:badanov |