During a press conference, Vladimir governor Alexander Avdeev was asked to address the issue of water supply in certain districts. In response, Avdeev noted that "we have been experiencing an excess of upper water for a second year in a row while rivers in Europe are drying up.” He shared his observation live on Rutube on March 15.
On 15 March, at a press conference of Governor Aleksander Avdeev, journalist Karolina Yevdokimova asked the official to resolve the water supply issue. She said that in some villages of Yuryev-Polsky district people are experiencing water shortages, sometimes there is no water at all. Drilling wells is useless as aquifers are out of reach. Before answering, the governor spoke about Europe.
"This, by the way, is an observation. <...> We have a second year of an excess of upper water, and in Europe, the rivers are drying up. They, of course, rejoiced that they had a warm winter, but the adverse consequences...," Avdeev said.
Avdeev then announced that the regional government has allocated 100 million rubles ($1,310,000) to address the water shortage in the district and that other municipalities have also received funding for infrastructure improvements.
This is not the first time that Russian officials compare living conditions in Russia and Europe. For example, Kaliningrad Governor Anton Alikhanov claimed that Germans were coming over to spend winter in the region due to high housing and utility costs. Similarly, officials in Krasnoyarsk published a video highlighting the lack of gas supply in Europe in winter. The video contained shots of Krasnoyarsk in which some areas are still without a gas supply.