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KYIV — Kremlin propagandists have long claimed that “General Frost” marshalled his icy forces to help Russia beat back Napoleon and Hitler, and will aid its troops in their invasion of Ukraine. But Vladimir Putin is finding the cold can be a fickle friend at home.
In the Moscow region in recent days and weeks, Russians have been freezing in their homes.
Some 20,000 people in the cities of Klimovsk, Lyubertsy, and Podolsk, in the Moscow region, have been left without heating for days — some of them for weeks — as temperatures have dropped below -25C last week, Russian Telegram channel Baza reported. Local authorities declared an emergency.
According to the state-run TASS news agency, the main reason for the lack of heat was a broken boiler at a local ammunition factory that supplies the Russian army’s war in Ukraine but also used to provide heat to Klimovsk and its outskirts.
The desperate situation even led some Russians to take to the streets in protest, albeit a mild one. In one video posted to social media in December, dozens of people gathered in snowy Podolsk. A woman addressed the camera with a direct appeal to Putin, saying: “We are freezing. In many houses in our city, there is almost no heat. There hasn’t been heat since the beginning of the heating season. Our many appeals to various authorities have done nothing. We receive excuses, and we freeze … Please hear us.”
Other Russians started posting photos and videos of frozen and flooded buildings and people warming up next to open fires on the streets.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin has repeatedly threatened Europe would “freeze” without Russian energy resources.
Last winter, Russian attacks damaged some 40 percent of Ukrainian energy infrastructure and caused blackouts throughout the country with continuous missile strikes.
This year, Russians renewed winter missile and drone strikes, aiming at Ukraine’s critical energy and military infrastructure.
However, while Ukraine has been suffering from local power outages and pipe bursts due to freezing weather, Kyiv has so far repelled most of the missiles.
“What we see now is how sanctions and lack of resources have started showing the effect on Russia’s own everyday life,” Ukrainian military expert Serhiy Hrabsky, reserve colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, told POLITICO.
“Due to sanctions and overblown military spending, Russia does not have enough resources to spare for annual checkups of its outdated housing and utilities sector,” Hrabsky said. “And now we are starting to see crises are coming in a snowstorm.”
The Moscow region investigative committee said it has opened a criminal case into the restricted supplies of energy resources to residential buildings and organizations in Podolsk, suspecting neglect.
Head of Podolsk District Grigoriy Artamonov said that local authorities could not access a boiler at the ammunition factory that caused the failure, but they managed to turn on two additional boilers and returned heating in several residential buildings as of January 6.
Ukrainians see the heating issues in the Moscow region as a matter of the Russians getting a taste of their own frosty medicine.
Russia continues to strike civilian targets inside Ukraine, despite the frozen temperatures, launching at least three massive missile attacks against Ukrainian cities over the holiday period in addition to regular bombings of the frontline towns in Kherson and elsewhere. While at home in Russia the temperature has risen slightly to -11C this week, local authorities still had to evacuate some families with children to camps and opened mobile heating points to provide warm food and clothes.
General Frost’s mischief does not worry pro-war Russian bloggers, who mocked Ukrainians suffering from burst pipes in Kyiv. “Kyiv is drowning in freezing shit. Any comments will only spoil it,” Russian blogger Ilya Tumanov, also known as Fighterbomber, said in a post.
One of the first appearances of General Frost, or General Winter, was in a satire of Napoleon’s explanation for why French troops failed in Russia during the winter campaign in 1812.
The cartoon was called “General Frost is Shaving Little Boney” and pictured a topless human half-bear figure shaving little Napoleon Bonaparte. Later historians claimed tactical failures, not winter led to Napoleon’s troops’ defeat.
General Frost was mentioned again as the ally helping the Soviet Union to resist the Nazis in World War II. Germans, hoping for a smooth campaign, had to face a severe Eastern European winter.
In Russia’s campaign against Ukraine, some of the Kremlin’s propagandists are still sure General Frost will fight on Russia’s side.
“General Frost is a myth created and amplified by the Russian state since the 19th century. As a person, who served in the Soviet Army, I can tell you that nature favors nobody and the Russian army has never had special training or was prepared for winter warfare,” Hrabsky said.
