INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
While Russian state propaganda has for weeks been portraying Europeans freezing in their own homes as a result of the EU's collective
central heating, according to the 2020 census
That share rises to more than 80% in some of the country's non-ethnically Russian regions in the Far East and Siberia, Verstka reported.Many
of those 10 million rural dwellers who live disconnected from the national gas network simply cannot afford to buy firewood this winter due
to low wages and the rise in the cost of living, Verstka found.Russian families need an average of 25,000 rubles ($350) to buy sufficient
firewood for the winter, according to NGO estimates, a figure that is often equivalent to an average monthly wage in regions that depend
heavily on firewood.While local authorities provide low-income families with either a fixed amount of firewood or plots of woodland where
President Vladimir Putin's mobilization order in September, some regional authorities have begun providing free heating wood to the families
on firewood to keep warm.
