Residents Plead for Power Amid Month-Long Outages
Residents of the Zaozerny settlement in the Nyandoma District have been regularly without electricity since December 27. According to locals who recorded an appeal to the company Rosseti Severo-Zapad, one of the outages lasted 18 hours. People«s appliances are breaking down, electric boilers and water pumps do not work, and ambulance workers are forced to help patients by candlelight.
«Solve Our Problem!»
— On February 2, we, the residents of Zaozerny, gathered here to draw attention to our problem. The issue is that, starting from December 27, 2025, throughout January 2026, and now February has begun, we are constantly having the electricity cut off — so the residents began their appeal.
According to locals, many have electric boilers for heating that do not work without electricity, and during frosts people are left without heat as well.
— We, of course, have great respect for the workers, those men who restore power to our homes in such weather, in the frost, but this cannot continue. Time is passing, and it is not getting better.
Residents of the settlement say that their refrigerators, televisions, and routers are breaking down, mobile phone reception is poor, and it is impossible to do laundry.
— My refrigerator broke down, how can I buy a new one on a pension? — shares a female resident of the North.
Problems also arose in the work of the ambulance service:
— Ambulance comes to an elderly woman, she needs to have her blood pressure measured. There are no batteries, the lights don«t work. She can»t have her pressure measured. There«s no flashlight, they have to do the IV by candlelight — says one resident.
As another female resident says, during one evening the electricity was cut off 10 times in an hour. Residents suggest that the area lacks workers: crews from Velsky District came to deal with the accidents.
The official community of the Nyandoma District on VK posted information on January 27 about the search for electricians.
Residents filmed a video appeal in front of a burned house. In their opinion, the fire that claimed a life could have been caused by old wiring that gave way during one of the outages.
The EMERCOM department for the Arkhangelsk Region reported a fire that occurred in the Zaozerny settlement on January 11.
— A fire occurred in a residential building that was partially vacated. Unfortunately, a man died. A fire-technical examination is currently being conducted to determine the cause of the fire — the press service of the EMERCOM said to 29.RU.
Locals fear that the fire could happen again and ask the company Rosseti Severo-Zapad to solve the problem.
— We appeal to the management of Rosseti to eliminate and solve this problem. We hope and wait. Solve our problem! Give us light! — the residents ended their appeal.
Authorities Ready to Sue
In various parts of the Nyandoma District, electricity was cut off at least four times over the past month, three of them due to emergencies. Several times during the winter, scheduled repair work on the networks was carried out, which also left residents without power. The situation caused active indignation among locals.
— 21 days of chaos with the power. In that time, a new line could have been built.
— For three weeks we haven«t received electricity in full. At first, dispatchers said: «The crews are working.» Then they take the address and phone and say: «The request has been accepted.» I call number 220 (the Rosseti hotline), they call the same dispatchers. In short, running around in circles. Every day there is some other reason and they fix everything, but we haven»t received electricity in full for all 21 days.
— They might as well not warn us, we«re used to sitting without power — writes Svetlana under another post about outages in the district administration group.
— In the summer they constantly had scheduled outages, but what«s the point? Now here we are again without power, it»s just terrible. The outages have become daily, the more they do, the more often everything breaks down.
— Another emergency outage. Where are the emergency services? The eleventh day without power.
— It«s already like the order of things, we»ve gotten used to it.
— But not for half a month straight!
— It started yesterday. Today the light bulbs are burning at half brightness, and the TV doesn«t work at all. If you count, there was power on January 1 and 2 and two more days, and the rest of January we didn»t receive electricity in full — wrote Irina on January 22.
— The village of Lelma has been without power for four days. What«s the problem? On January 8, 9, and 10, there was also intermittent power. Sometimes they give it, sometimes they cut it, like that for all three days. Now problems again… Dilapidated housing, old wiring, trouble is not far off. No power, no communication, no water either, because the water pump runs on electricity.
— No power, no water, no internet. We«re boldly marching into the Stone Age. What nanotechnology and artificial intelligence?!
On February 1, by decree of head Kononov, a high alert mode was introduced in the Nyandoma District.
On February 29, local deputies addressed the district head with the question: what measures are being taken against PJSC Rosseti, which is responsible for eliminating and preventing regular emergency power outages in the rural areas of the district? The answer from Alexander Kononov was published in the group of the Nyandoma District Council of Deputies.
— The legal service is filing a lawsuit in court to compel Rosseti to carry out major repairs. The reasons are not only snow accumulation, we see sagging wires, poles in substandard condition, we see overgrown lines — Kononov replied. — I will invite Rosseti specialists to participate in the inspection. If they do not show up, we draw up an act and file lawsuits. The prosecutor«s office is initiating an inspection regarding Rosseti.
What Rosseti Severo-Zapad Says
The editorial board of 29.RU contacted the company for comment. There, the main problem is said to be the weather.
— Almost all technological disturbances are related to adverse weather conditions. Over the past 40 years, the climate has changed; if before there were stable sub-zero temperatures in winter months, now it is temperature swings, with positive values giving way to negative ones and vice versa, the ground and swamps do not have time to freeze. Because of this, ice forms on power line wires, which can add several tons of load on the wire in each span. As a result — sagging and breakage of wires. Power engineers promptly respond to reports of technological disturbances and carry out the necessary work.
For all questions, consumers can contact the toll-free 24/7 hotline: 8 800 220-02-20 (short number for mobile phones — 220).
Power outage problems recently occurred in two districts, Pinezhsky and Kholmogorsky, and this happened not for the first time in January. 9,171 homes were left without power, as well as 85 socially significant facilities, including schools, kindergartens, and boiler houses. In some settlements of the Mezensky, Velsky districts and the Lensky district, electricity also disappeared.
On January 3, the administration of the Pinezhsky District made a statement, which was later deleted the same day. The editorial board of 29.RU has screenshots of the post in their official VK group. The statement ended with the following words:
— The administration continues to keep the situation under control and insists on carrying out preventive and repair work on power lines so that such accidents do not happen again.
Commenting on the large-scale accident on February 2, the Pinezhsky District administration also cited climate conditions and bad weather as the cause.
— The climate in the Arctic is extremely variable, that is its main nuisance for all engineering systems. For example, in 2020 there was a hurricane that left us without electricity for several days. It happened in the summer, so we did not feel fatal consequences, but still it happened. Last year the weather was warm, there were no severe frosts, the wires had time to thaw. And there were no widespread large outages. But local ones occurred regularly in different parts of the district. This year there is both snow and severe frosts.
How the Problem Will Be Solved
We contacted the government of the Arkhangelsk Region for comment. There they reported that the situation regarding accident response is being monitored around the clock through the unified duty-dispatch services of municipalities.
— Key importance in this work is the clarity of actions, promptness of decision-making, and coordinated interaction between local authorities and resource-supplying organizations. Based on the analysis of current accident rates at power grid facilities, an agreement was reached with MRSK Severo-Zapada on adjusting the plans of the repair program for 2026, — said Dmitry Rozhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Arkhangelsk Region. — The updated plans will be formed taking into account the identified problem sections of the networks and will be aimed at increasing the reliability of power supply, reducing the risks of repeated accidents, and ensuring stable operation of infrastructure in the municipalities of the Arkhangelsk Region.
A neighboring region of the Arkhangelsk Region faced a massive blackout. In the Arctic region, five power line supports collapsed at once. Murmansk, Severomorsk, and several suburban areas were suddenly left without power. A helicopter was sent from Arkhangelsk to help the neighboring region.
Governor Tsybulsky ordered drills on eliminating accidents on power grids. According to the government press service, the goal of the exercise is to practice procedures in the event of accidents on power lines supplying electricity to Arkhangelsk, Novodvinsk, and Severodvinsk.
