Gas is too expensive. Russians demand to stop "forgiving friends' debts"

Back in early June, NI wrote that the Ministry of Energy was preparing to raise gas prices for industrial consumers by 10% twice a year. And industrial consumers in Russia are not only large factories and plants, but also generating companies that supply heat, hot water and electricity to the population.

But, if we are to believe Vadim Dengin , a member of the Federation Council Committee on Budget and Financial Markets (they should know a thing or two about money), the rise in gas prices should not affect ordinary people.

— First of all, we must take care of ordinary consumers. The introduction of seasonal coefficients should not lead to an increase in tariffs for the population. Perhaps it is worth working out support measures for large enterprises and generating companies.

Maybe they will work out support measures, maybe they won't. In any case, it is impossible to do without increasing the burden on people - money does not come out of thin air.

Unfortunately, free money has not yet been invented. And even if the head of the Ministry of Finance Anton Siluanov pretends to be a great magician and starts pulling out of the hat not rabbits but rubles for these subsidies, the population will still pay for it through inflation.

And the Council of Energy Producers, which unites generating companies, has already warned that heat and electricity for the population will become much more expensive because of this. Indexation for the end consumer from July 2026 will be 15-20%. Otherwise, it will be necessary to refuse to repair the networks, which will lead to accidents and reduce the reliability of heat supply.

The authorities, at the instigation of Gazprom, have started a very dangerous game. Increasing gas fees by 85 billion rubles annually will lead to the need to raise utility rates beyond what is currently planned.

The record rise in utility prices has caused a stormy reaction: NI readers raised an unexpected topic in the comments to the previous article. People believe that other countries are simply being financed at the expense of Russians. Their debts are being written off, while more and more is being demanded from their own citizens. The authorities should think about it.

But first of all, people believe that part of the money collected by utility workers will simply be stolen.

But mistrust of utility companies is only half the trouble. The price hikes are hurting the government's ratings. It turned out that the news about free electricity for Abkhazia, where it is used by illegal cryptocurrency miners, and the forgiveness of Tajikistan's 25.3 billion rubles in electricity debts did not go unnoticed by people.

The lack of understanding as to why the authorities are ready to forgive debts to everyone around them, but only raise prices for the population, became the main topic of discussion.

People see the reasons for such a policy in the transition to capitalist rails in the 90s of the last century and the privatization of everything and everyone. They even recalled the statements of Anatoly Chubais .

Ultimately, all this leads to extremely unpleasant consequences: discontent with the current government is growing among the people. And the axiom "the tsar is good, but the boyars are bad" no longer works. Now the government's actions negatively affect the president's ratings.

As long as all this discontent remains within the emotional comments, there is no threat to the authorities. But if the screws are tightened further and money is taken from the family budgets of Russians at this rate, then there will be more dissatisfied people.

Due to the increase in the recycling fee, the budget will lose 200 billion rubles in 2025: cars have stopped being imported. A similar situation may arise with utilities if people do not pay their unaffordable bills.