Residents of Tura, a Siberian town of about 4,000 people, are facing rationed food and persistent shopping queues despite emergency air deliveries, RFE/RL’s Siberia.Realities reported on October 31. Weather disrupted two flights, leaving the latest shipment without potatoes, onions or cabbage.
The supply crisis began after low river levels blocked the town’s principal transport route in July. Tura has no road connection to Krasnoyarsk, the regional capital more than 1,000 kilometers away. Authorities failed to arrange adequate replacement deliveries, according to the report, and fresh-food shortages followed in October.
During the worst shortages in mid-October, shoppers waited for hours in temperatures around minus 15 degrees Celsius. Svetlana, a resident whose surname was withheld for her safety, described purchase limits and rules requiring each family member to appear in person. Another resident, Olga, said she could not collect her elderly mother’s allocation for her.
Some foods virtually disappeared from shops, while prices more than tripled by official counts cited in the report. On October 21, district authorities warned that several schools had insufficient food to last through the month. Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into several officials on suspicion of negligence.
The report attributes the shortages to transport difficulties and poor planning, rather than directly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the war has brought a separate burden: a database maintained by the Russian-language outlet Mediazona lists 34 people from Tura who died in the conflict.
About 900 residents have roots in the Indigenous Evenk community. Local residents described scarce work and declining livelihoods from hunting and fishing, saying military pay helped draw men into service. Their accounts portray a town confronting both immediate uncertainty over winter food supplies and lasting losses from the war.