Mayor of Novouralsk in Sverdlovsk Region, Vyacheslav Tyumentsev, said in September 2024 that the organizations responsible for connecting apartment buildings to the heating system should be held accountable for the fact that 38 buildings were left without heat at the start of the season. The cause was airlocks in the pipelines.
In early October 2025, Tyumentsev reported the city’s readiness for the heating season on his VK page. «This is a high assessment of the joint work carried out by the municipality and the specialists of our nuclear town’s heating and energy complex. The warmth and comfort in citizens’ homes directly depend on the quality of this preparatory work,» he wrote.
In the comments under the post, residents asked the mayor: if the city is ready for the heating season, why are utility workers turning off heating and hot water in some buildings? The administration responded that «having a readiness certificate does not exclude the need for additional work on certain sections of the heating networks. It is optimal to carry out such work before stable negative temperatures and snow cover set in.»
In the new heating season, residents of Novouralsk were left without heat at least four times since October, according to 7×7’s calculations. Residents of the wider Sverdlovsk Region faced heating shutdowns most often in Russia at least 12 times since the start of the season. In the Rostov Region, heating was turned off at least eight times; in Irkutsk Region five.
In total, 7×7 found 123 cases in which residents in Russia were left without heat in their homes between October and December 2025 due to utility accidents. The editorial team did not include cases where heating networks were damaged by drone attacks or where heating was slowed, but not fully shut off, by utility services.
Residents of Krasnye Tkachy, a village in Yaroslavl Region, were left without heating twice in the 2025 season. In January 2024, the village lost heat during the coldest week of the year. All three boilers in the local boiler house failed. In August 2025, the boiler house again turned out to be unprepared for the heating season. The Yaroslavl Region Prosecutor’s Office issued a warning to the head of the Yaroslavl municipal district, Alexey Mikhailov, but by October the district administration was already reporting on VK that it was ready for the new season. Mikhailov did not comment on either the earlier warning or the new accidents at the boiler house in Krasnye Tkachy.
In Dudinka, a town on the Taymyr Peninsula, several buildings lost heating and hot water on 24 November. In some of them, there was still no heat as of 8 December, when 7×7 completed its tally. The average temperature in Dudinka in November is —20°C, according to Yandex. Weather.
Resident of Dudinka Marina Ulanova told Taimyr Telegraph that «the town has been left to fend for itself,» and that it is impossible to eliminate the accidents because there are not enough workers.
«Half the buildings have no water — either there’s no hot water, or no cold water, or none at all in some apartments. Some buildings still have no heating. The sewage system has frozen, and people can’t even use their toilets. There aren’t enough plumbers. People are working day and night, but at —40°C pipes burst everywhere,» another Dudinka resident, Darya Novikova, told Taimyr Telegraph.
According to political consultant Alexey Aksyutenko, the head of the Taimyr district, Alexey Chlenov, was in Krasnoyarsk celebrating his birthday when the accident occurred. On 6 December, Chlenov introduced a state of heightened readiness. On his VK page on 8 December, he wrote that since 24 November residents of Dudinka had submitted 241 reports about lack of heating in homes and building entrances.
Chlenov explained the increase in emergency situations on the networks not only by severe frosts and poor-quality pipe insulation work, but also by a specific feature of the heat and water supply system in most buildings: the absence of circulation when residents do not use water.
The Russian authorities raise utility fees every year, and in 2026 tariffs will increase twice. From 1 January, utility payments will rise by 1.7%, and from 1 October, after the State Duma elections, the increase will depend on the specific region. For example, in Kursk Region the average index will be 11.4%, in Tyumen Region 17.2%, and in Nizhny Novgorod Region 9.9%. Taking into account both increases, tariffs will rise the most in Stavropol Krai (23.7%), Dagestan (21.4%), Tambov Region (19.2%), Tyumen Region (18.9%), and North Ossetia (18%).
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