Amid record spending on the war, millions in Russia still lack clean drinking water
Russia has some of the largest freshwater reserves on the planet, yet around one in nine residents still lacks access to clean drinking water. A federal program meant to address the crisis — costing 200 billion rubles ($2.5 billion) and five years of work — has effectively failed. Meanwhile, Russia’s military spending now vastly outweighs state investment in utilities infrastructure like water systems. RFE/RL’s Sibir.Realii has reported on how deep the problem runs and why state efforts keep falling short. Meduza summarizes their findings.
The village of Boyarsky, in Russia’s Republic of Buryatia, stretches along the shore of Lake Baikal — the largest reservoir of fresh water on the planet. Only about 70 people live there today, half as many as at the time of the 2010 census. Locals work on the railroad or run small farms and tourist lodges.
Boyarsky has never had a centralized water supply. Instead, residents rely on two wooden wells and a pump on each of the settlement’s two streets. The quality and availability of water have been a problem for years.
“We wrote everywhere we could,” one resident said. “We reached out to deputies, wrote to the governor. It’s absurd: Baikal is 300 meters [328 yards] away, and we still don’t have clean water. They fixed one well, but it’s temporary — the mold or something else will come back. And it’s not convenient anyway. Pensioners walk all the way down to Baikal to haul water straight from the lake. Most of the people here are elderly…”
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One of the village wells was built more than 30 years ago; the other was dug by the local administration in 2017 at a cost of 190,000 rubles (the equivalent of about $2,300 today). After new complaints in 2024, local officials inspected both wells and concluded they had been contaminated by snowmelt and rising groundwater. They cleaned one well and made partial repairs, and they also fixed one of the railroad-owned pumps.
“The pump draws water straight from Baikal and has a filter, maintained by a railroad contractor,” said a former district council member. “I assume the water is there, though it might not be great.”
“We don’t trust it for drinking, though at least it’s something,” a resident said. “The problem is that the pumps can freeze in winter. Then it’s back to Baikal. Which also freezes. The well they repaired… it still doesn’t work, because the groundwater rises again. Same story. I think it was just built wrong.”
‘People assume spring water is always clean’
Boyarsky is far from the only place in Buryatia struggling with drinking water. In 2024, it was reported that only about 51 percent of the republic’s residents had access to clean tap water. Until 2024, the district center of Kabansk — a settlement on the Selenga River — lacked a centralized water system; more than 2,000 people on the southeastern side had to drive across town to fetch water.
Nationwide, 88.7 percent of Russians had access to clean drinking water in 2024, according to the To Be Precise data project — an improvement of just 1.4 percentage points since 2022. That still leaves roughly one in nine Russians without safe water, or around 16 million people. Residents across the country regularly appeal to President Vladimir Putin about the problem.
The To Be Precise researchers based their analysis on Federal Statistics Service (Rosstat) and Federal Water Resources Agency data. Compared to other publicly available figures, the absolute number of Russians without safe water appears to be rising. In 2009, then-Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov claimed — without citing a source — that 11 million people lacked drinking water. By 2020, Russia’s Accounts Chamber put the figure at 12.3 million.
Experts from the Coalition for Sustainable Development of Russia (CSDR), drawing on Accounts Chamber data, say the downward trend stems from several factors: aging water infrastructure, river pollution, more frequent flooding, and poor oversight of natural springs, which are often contaminated.
“First of all, there are natural causes,” an analytical chemist told Sibir.Realii. “Flooding has become more common, partly due to climate change. Floodwaters carry every possible contaminant into natural water bodies — including those from which people get their water.”
According to Russia’s consumer protection agency, Rospotrebnadzor, between 2014 and 2023 the number of surface water sources failing sanitary standards rose by nearly five percent.
“People also assume spring water is always clean, but contaminants enter groundwater, too — from untreated sewage, septic pits, agricultural runoff, industrial waste,” the chemist said. Springs are not subject to regular state monitoring, she added, though a small number get added to official registries when residents push local authorities to test them.
The Accounts Chamber reports that by 2023, 67 percent of water-intake facilities and 75 percent of water-supply systems were worn out. Between 2021 and 2023, only one percent of water infrastructure was replaced. Pollution also keeps rising. In 2022, Russia recorded 2,471 cases of high or extreme water contamination across at least 320 sites — a record at the time. By 2024, the figure had risen to 3,095.
A hydrotechnical engineer links the surge to Russia’s decision to reduce environmental inspections in 2023. A moratorium on routine checks for many facilities effectively weakened oversight, he said. “And municipal and industrial wastewater contribute significantly to pollution where treatment plants are absent or barely functioning.”
‘No money, no water’
Globally, about two billion people — one in four — lack safe drinking water, according to the United Nations. Russia, despite having the world’s second-largest supply of fresh water after Brazil, has failed to fix the problem. An ecologist who spoke to Sibir.Realii cited failing or nonexistent infrastructure: wells collapse and contaminating the water, and Russia’s aging pipes lose significant volumes before water reaches consumers.
“Russia has no shortage of bodies of water, including sources suitable for water intake,” he said. “The issue is distribution. The most dramatic example is the Republic of Kalmykia — an arid region with few natural water sources. Only 7–10 percent of people there have access to drinking water. They need a pipeline from the Volga, but construction keeps stalling. It’s not that no one tries to solve the problem, the pace is just nowhere near enough. Utilities don’t have the money, and regional governments don’t either.”
The federal “Clean Water” program allocates 53 billion rubles (about $654 million) for 2025 — a sum the ecologist calls inadequate. “Kalmykia alone needs 50 billion [about $617 million]. No money, no water. That applies just as much to regions around Baikal,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russia spends an estimated 30 billion rubles ($370 million) per day on the war in Ukraine.
Under the “Clean Water” program, officials have spent roughly 200 billion rubles ($2.5 billion) over five years. As part of the “Volga Recovery” project, they built 139 treatment and water-intake facilities costing 127 billion rubles ($1.6 billion) — but only six met the project’s stated standards. In the Yaroslavl region, none of the treatment plants worked properly, and investigators opened a case into the theft of 700 million rubles ($8.6 million). A major project in Buryatia also failed due to improper construction.
“The core issue is that the program lacks both the goal and the capacity to address the problem systemically,” the hydrotechnical engineer said. Many regions reduce the project to cleaning trash along a short stretch of riverbank. Some wastewater facilities have been modernized, a few new ones built, “but thousands of settlements still lack sewage and centralized treatment altogether,” he added. In rural areas, homes rely on pit latrines, and some residents simply discharge wastewater from toilets and bathhouses into the nearest ditch or stream. Installing septic systems is expensive and rarely enforced.
Experts from CSDR say the war will further strain Russia’s water security. While the full impact won’t be clear until after the fighting ends, new sources of contamination have already emerged. In the Siverskyi Donets basin — which spans parts of Rostov and Belgorod regions — several mines were flooded during combat. The water has not yet been tested, but researchers warn that the river may no longer remain a safe source of drinking water.
“Armed conflict brings many environmental threats,” one expert said, citing rocket propellant, fuel leaks, military camps, and waste from troops — all of which eventually enter waterways.
According to sources who spoke to Sibir.Realii, Russia’s nominal spending on water infrastructure and utilities has risen 1.5–2 times since the start of the full-scale war. But once inflation is accounted for, real spending has stagnated or even declined. As a result, projects are being scaled back, budgets trimmed, and deadlines pushed.
Some estimates suggest that in 2025, Russia’s military spending will exceed funding for the entire utilities sector — including water supply — by a factor of 15.
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