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2025-07-23 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
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Reservoirs Turned into Puddles. Donbass on the Brink of a Water Catastrophe
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
A young woman who I follow on V Kontakte says that water flows to a trickle and that's every three days. It is a potentially deadly situation.
by Alena Morozova and Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] Two days ago, the population of the Donetsk People's Republic watched with surprise as the bed of the Krynka River was cleared: those responsible vied with each other to claim that this would "ensure the unimpeded flow of water" into one of the reservoirs of the DPR water supply system.
Donetsk residents have been carrying water by hand in bottles for years
However, everyone knows that the Khanzhonkovskoye reservoir in question emptied in May. And, as residents of the village of Nizhnyaya Krynka claim, the water main running from here to Donetsk burst back in December, which is why the nearby village of Lipovoye was flooded for five months with water that was supposed to go to the filtration station.
This situation is all over the republic: reservoirs have emptied to critical levels, all cities, including Donetsk, have huge problems with water supply, but on “water day” it runs merrily through the streets and goes into the ground.
Nobody understands why it was impossible to clean the Krynka riverbed earlier.
"The problem did not start yesterday or even a week ago. It has been going on for years. Some people are luckier - water has finally reached them. But in a few hours you need to do laundry (preferably several times), wash dishes, clean the apartment and wash yourself, and many have children - and water consumption increases, and there is little "water" time.
Listening to the authorities about how they are "solving the problem" without stopping is funny and sad, sometimes it all looks like a mockery. We have already heard about new cool water pipelines, about wells and about water from mines. But these conversations have changed almost nothing," says Svetlana, a resident of the Kuibyshevsky district of Donetsk,at the limit of her strength and emotions
The water supply situation in Donetsk and Makeyevka, which had been gradually improving since late 2022 - early 2023, is now close to catastrophic. On Sunday, July 20, residents of the region received a message from the Voda Donbassa company that due to an acute shortage of water, from July 21 it will be supplied once every three days from 17:00 to 21:00.
But by this time, society was already tense to the limit, since a few days before the official publication of the address by the head of government, Andrei Chertkov, a photograph of a document appeared on social networks, which contained new schedules separately for each of the largest agglomerations of the DPR.
There was no official information confirming or refuting these inputs, people read and were perplexed: is it true or not, will the supply of precious moisture be reduced or not. And most importantly, how to arrange life now in conditions of an acute shortage of water, of which there is already little.
But all official resources of the region kept silent for three days, until finally the head of the government actually confirmed: yes, there will be no water. Moreover, residents of all districts of Donetsk noticed a significant reduction not only in its supply, but also in pressure three weeks ago. Some houses in the city center saw water once every two days for only 20 minutes, during which you can only fill two buckets of 10 liters each.
At the same time, the officially established consumption rate is 330 liters per person per day (if the meter is not verified), and it is paid for as drinking water.
It takes about an hour to create such a supply of water.
"There has been no water at Artema, 84a, for the third week already, the water simply does not reach the upper floors due to the reduction in the supply time. It would start running later than everyone else, often from 18:00, and now there has been no water for the third week, even the tap does not make noise... Although the official channel of the Voroshilovsky district writes that the supply will be from 17:00 to 21:00," Elena, a resident of the Central District of Donetsktells the Regnum news agency.
Her family has a sad experience - the supply schedules change, but the water still doesn't reach the house. The house is old, without an elevator, you can't bring much to the upper floors, and they don't deliver it in the required quantity. Calls to the control room are unsuccessful, there is only one answer: "What do you want? The whole city is without water!"
On the outskirts and without adjustments the situation is hopeless.
According to Yulia, a resident of the Lidievka mine settlement, the last time they saw water from the tap was in February 2022. Most of the residents, and there are about 50 thousand of them, are pensioners. The authorities, of course, provided a supply, but the resource is catastrophically insufficient. There are only 5 tons of water for all 40 streets of the settlement.
"They brought it on Saturday. But that's nothing - only 5 tons a week for a few streets. And then what? Again in a week? We are all horrified, because the problem did not arise today. No one is doing anything in our area. And when we have to wait for water, only God knows, and hauling it all year round, in any weather, is becoming unbearable," says a woman desperate to get through to anyone.
The most amazing thing is that when water is supplied to the village, most of it again simply flows into the ground through rotten pipes. The most that emergency services do is plug the new holes with wooden plugs and bury the pipe back. People here were promised back in October of last year 2024 that the main water supply on Lyubarsky Street, which floods the nearest households, would be replaced, but nothing has changed.
According to Yulia, the problem was promised to be addressed personally by the deputy of the People's Council of the DPR Vitaly Zolotnyuk, who controls housing and communal services issues. He came to the village on July 8, called back the next day and said that Moscow would do the repair work, but he did not know when this would happen.
Almost daily, information appears on social networks that the Donbass water issue is being raised at the highest federal level and, at the same time, as the Head of the DPR Denis Pushilin wrote in his Telegram channel on July 18, “planned repair work is underway on the water pipeline from the Don River to the Seversky Donets-Donbass Canal.”
But people don’t believe in anything anymore, there’s no water in the tap.
And we are talking about the very same water pipeline, on which great hopes were pinned in 2023: the authorities of the republic insisted that the pipe would partially solve the region's problem. But everyone also remembers the story that the person responsible for its construction was Timur Ivanov, the former Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, who is now in a pretrial detention center and testifying on a number of episodes of embezzlement on an especially large scale.
Be that as it may, the volume of water that the branch from the Don River is capable of giving is 252.24 thousand cubic meters per day. This is not enough for Donetsk and the settlements adjacent to it, they still cannot do without local sources. And the weather in the region is becoming drier, while the number of people living in the capital of the DPR has increased many times over.
Those who do not have enough pressure on the upper floors are forced to carry water up the stairs.
"The level of Verkhne-Kalmius, Makeevka, and Olkhovsky has fallen to critical values. And the volumes that we have are not enough for industry, agriculture, or for supplying water to the residents of the republic," the head of government said on Friday evening.
The Makeyevka reservoir was replenished only from the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal, the water intake of which has been under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces since 2014. Now, instead of 10 million cubic meters, there are 900 thousand left. The Verkhne-Kalmius reservoir received 12 million cubic meters, and now there are 700 thousand left. All of them simply turn into puddles.
Therefore, the authorities call the reduction in the water supply schedule to Donetsk and Makeyevka a “forced measure” in order to more rationally use the resource that the region currently has.
As a result, residents of Yenakiyevo have been receiving water once every four days since last fall, the Volyntsevskoye Reservoir, which fed the city, has dried up. And Mariupol, which for a long time saw water in the tap every day, was first transferred to an hourly schedule when the level of the Starokrymskoye Reservoir dropped by 60%, and from July 21, 2025 - to a schedule of supplying once every two days from 17:00 to 21:00, like everyone else.
By the way, there are also cities that receive water 24/7: Dokuchaevsk, Novoazovsk, Telmanovo, Amvrosievka, Starobeshevo. There are underground sources here, the presence of which can only be dreamed of by residents of that part of the DPR, where the underground water system is destroyed by mine workings.
But only a small part of the republic's population lives there.
Bolshaya lives like a young mother Emilia from the Central City District of Makeyevka. Her child is not even a year old yet, and due to her husband's frequent business trips, all household problems fall on the girl's shoulders.
"I have to lower the stroller in a building without an elevator, with a porch destroyed by time, make my way to the nearest store, pick up the baby (after all, in our stores, and in Makeyevka and Donetsk in general, there is nothing for mothers with strollers) and do everything with him in my arms. Of course, we have to wash often, we need to maintain the baby's hygiene and the cleanliness of his clothes, but there is no water for this," says Emilia.
Those whose children are going to school and kindergarten on September 1 for the long-awaited in-person learning are worried about how they will be provided with hot meals in the conditions of an acute shortage of water. And, in addition, there are other troubles: there is nothing to water the birds at the Rozovskaya poultry farm, and chickens are dying en masse there. Due to a lack of water, the Zuyevskaya TPP, one of the two key power plants in the DPR, may stop working. It is unclear how to conduct agriculture - there is nowhere to get water for irrigation.
All questions remain unanswered, there is no normal dialogue, and social tension is growing. And the new reduced feed schedules leave no chance at all to find some kind of solution on your own.
People do not hear or listen to any abstract action plans because they are tired. So far, all that the republic's authorities can offer is an increase in water delivery in "manual mode": provide hospitals and social institutions, install additional tanks, fill them more than usual.
But, as before, the radical solution to the problem lies only in returning control over the canals from the Seversky Donets and Dnieper and replacing the entire water supply system.
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Posted by badanov 2025-07-23 00:00||
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