These are recent photos from the Russian city Omsk.
Apartment buildings frozen over because a large number of them have no access to natural gas — the pipes are missing and were never there.
Russia is the world’s largest producer of natural gas.
Putin doesn’t care about “saving Russian lives”. Some estimates show 75% of homes in distant regions do not have gas. Why build pipelines for Russians when you can sell gas to Europe, pocket the money and pay an army of policemen to defend you?
@Vonzales: It's wild to me how many people, from randos on the internet to people I have known for years/decades, until lately really believed that Russia and the former Soviet Union were some sort of workers paradise. (I wish I was kidding.) Or they thought Russia was "like the US and Europe" but just Russian.
Many are having a hard time ignoring what they're seeing in real-time, but they're trying, at least to have it both ways somehow.