Standing on a lookout point above the Siberian city of Chita, 46-year-old energy worker Vitaliy Gobrik surveyed its fast-expanding suburbs, where the landscape bristles with thousands of low-rise chimneys.
“Out of poverty, people burn coal, wood . . . but they also burn rubber, garbage, waste oil, wooden rail sleepers,” Gobrik said, smog sinking into the skyline below. “They put anything they can find in those stoves.”
Chita is one of many big cities in Siberia that have not been connected to Russia’s domestic gas network. Instead, coal-fired power stations heat the city centre, while residents of the suburbs fend off freezing temperatures by firing up furnaces, causing some of the worst air pollution in Russia.
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