Press Release, 06.02.2023

On 4 February, Natalya Chubykina, Chair of the Novosibirsk branch of Yabloko, spoke at a rally against the rise in prices for housing and utilities.

At the beginning of her speech, Chubykina noted that over the past two years, Yabloko had repeatedly attempted to hold mass events, but the Novosibirsk administration each time referred to COVID bans.

Speaking about the problems of housing and utilities sector, the Chair of the Novosibirsk Yabloko recalled that Yabloko in each of its programme documents had been paying attention to the housing and utilities sector and had repeatedly called to take the following steps so that to improve the situation in the sector:

“First, to remove monopolies. Second, to make all processes in the housing and utilities transparent. Third, modernisation in housing and utilities. Fourth, reporting to the population on the cost of housing and utilities. In 2017, when we all went out together to protest against raising the heat prices, we demanded the same thing: explain to us why you are raising prices much higher than inflation, much more than the notorious Moscow envisaged. They didn’t explain anything to us. As a result, a high-ranking official lost his place,” Natalya Chubykina noted in her speech.

It should be noted that the authorities of the Novosibirsk region approved a price increase from 9.1% to 17% for electricity, heating, water and gas supply from 1 December, 2022. According to official data from Rosstat, whose methodology for calculating the price growth index often change and remain opaque even for experts, inflation in Russia was 11.9% in 2022, the prices of food stuffs rose by 10.5% over the year. The Federal Statistics Agency informed that the jump in inflation at the end of 2022 was associated with an unscheduled, second-over-the-year increase in tariffs for housing and utilities, which, already in December, began to affect rising of prices for other basic commodities and services.