A total blackout, plus cutoffs of heat and hot water, has become the reality in Severomorsk and Murmansk, where the utilities infrastructure has effectively collapsed.
Severomorsk — the main base of Russia’s Northern Fleet — was left completely without electricity. The city fell into darkness in the evening, initially losing power in several districts before the outage swept across the entire municipality. Soon after, similar disruptions hit nearby Safonovo and Roslyakovo, which also host Northern Fleet facilities.
Power then began to disappear in stages in Murmansk, the regional capital, according to the Russian project “VChK-OGPU” on its X social media page.
Almost simultaneously with the power cut, heating in residential buildings went offline. Authorities were forced to urgently drain water from heating systems to prevent pipes from freezing and bursting amid subzero temperatures.
According to sources, even critical infrastructure sites lost electricity - a fact also acknowledged by Russia’s Investigative Committee.
At first, residents were told the outages were caused by bad weather. As proof, officials shared video of a single damaged power-line pole. But as the outages widened, it became clear this was not a localized accident.
The scope points to a systemic failure driven by critically worn infrastructure that, residents say, has been faltering for the past two to three years.
Problems in Severomorsk have been building for years. In December alone, 111 residential buildings and nine social facilities were left without hot water and heating. In January, Safonovo saw a similar situation, followed by recurring power disruptions.
On January 9, Severomorsk already experienced an overnight power shutdown. Later, the problems spread to the Kola District. For locals, it was obvious the system was on the brink of total collapse.
“In the past month, it’s just a disaster,” is how the situation in the city is described.
The report says large-scale corruption is to blame. Locals and sources allege that a significant portion of funds allocated for modernizing utilities was stolen, and that real work was either not performed or only done on paper.
“Governor of Murmansk region Andrey Chibis has completely destroyed the region’s utilities — all the money has been stolen as a result of gigantic corruption,” the report states.
The project also notes the governor has been spending large sums on a campaign to hush up the catastrophic situation in the region in Russia’s federal media.
Even so, the scale of the crisis has made it impossible to fully ignore. Some Russian outlets have begun publishing stories on the topic.
Chibis, for his part, blamed Rosseti, the national grid operator headed by Andrey Ryumin, son-in-law of former Verkhovna Rada deputy Viktor Medvedchuk. The Investigative Committee has opened a negligence case and said in a news release that Rosseti failed to maintain transmission lines.
“No one doubts that Rosseti, headed by Viktor Medvedchuk’s son-in-law Andrey Ryumin, is a corruption cesspool with massive theft. But Chibis is no better,” VChK-OGPU writes.
