Forbes magazine reported that the Russian government decided to reduce fiscal subsidies to the four regions of occupied eastern Ukraine, that is, to reduce fiscal transfers to the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson: In 2023, the Russian government provided about 513 billion rubles (about $5.8 billion) of fiscal transfers to these four regions from the state budget, which will fall to 303 billion rubles (about $3.4 billion) this year, and perhaps even less.
We do not see why the Russian government is reducing fiscal transfers to the four occupied regions of eastern Ukraine, but analysts speculate that this may be related to the Russian government's sharply deteriorating fiscal situation, the "special military operation" Security spending has gobbled up more than half of the Russian government's budget, or more, and under Western sanctions, the Russian government's real fiscal revenues are decreasing, and in order to ensure that the ruble does not depreciate too quickly, it can only print money at a reduced rate and reduce spending in other areas, such as fiscal transfers to local governments: in this regard, the Russian government has done relatively the same, not only in the four regions of eastern Ukraine, but also in the economically backward regions of Russia, such as Chukotka Autonomous Region and Tuva, which have also received fiscal transfers。
According to the incomplete wanted by the Russian media, in January this year, 43 of the 85 federal subjects in Russia had serious utility accidents with water cuts, power outages, heating outages, and even freezing to death, which was simply unimaginable in the past.
Of course, this is also happening in Ukraine, especially in the winter of 2022, but according to public reports, there have been very few power and heating outages in Ukraine this winter, and they have been quickly repaired. This kind of thing happened in Ukraine because the target of the Russian army's air strikes was Ukraine's energy infrastructure, and the situation has been alleviated this year, mainly because of the fact that in addition to more adequate support work and better air defense protection, it is also related to the fact that the Russian army has reduced its strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure: the Russian army will use more missiles and suicide drones to hit the Ukrainian military industry.
In contrast, although the Ukrainian army began to use suicide drones to attack Russian energy facilities, the targets were mainly oil depots, refineries and oil ports, and did not hit Russia's civilian infrastructure. The only reason for this is the lack of maintenance due to insufficient funding, which is one of the negative effects of the war on Russia, but not all Russians understand this.
Russians may not understand that the blackouts, heat outages, and water outages are related to the "special military operation" in distant Ukraine, but the Kremlin understands that from public reports, we can see that similar problems and the resulting street protests are becoming noticeably less than some time ago, for the simple reason that the Kremlin has taken control measures:
The Novosibirsk governor's office issued a notice prohibiting residents from taking to the streets to protest the heating cut, and the same heating problems occurred in the region, where the local temperature ranged from minus 20 to 30 degrees Celsius, or even lower, and "the severe cold weather exacerbated the severity of the major crisis that is rapidly expanding by the local government".
This is true of Russia proper, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, not to mention the occupied Ukrainian territories, where in the Crimea, Sevastopol residents queue up for water on cold nights, which in the past was completely unthinkable, "completely filthy and rotten, like everything Russia touches."
After the occupation of Crimea in 2014, not only Russians were jubilant, but also the locals of Crimea, in addition to the fact that the local residents were mainly ethnic Russians, a large part of the reason was that Putin promised to revive the Crimean economy through huge investments, so that the standard of living in Crimea could reach that of Russia itself. We don't know exactly what is going on in Crimea because of the ban on foreign journalists, but according to the limited information, Crimeans are not doing very well, and this is not very good, not just economically.