Water continued to rise on Tuesday in Russia and Kazakhstan, hit by major floods particularly along the Ural River which are endangering localities, announced the authorities who expect a new peak on Wednesday.
In Orenburg, on the Urals, warning sirens sounded in the city before the water level reached 931 centimeters during the evening, one centimeter above the “danger” threshold. The record of 946 cm dates back to 1942.
“This is a sign that the situation regarding flooding in Orenburg is extremely dangerous,” the mayor of this city of half a million inhabitants, Sergei Salmin, said on Telegram.
He called on residents of several areas of the city to leave: “Don’t waste time.”
According to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, more than 10,500 houses were flooded and more than 6,500 people were evacuated in Russian regions located in the Urals and Western Siberia.
These floods are caused by heavy rains associated with rising temperatures, increased snowmelt and the breakup of winter ice covering rivers and rivers.
No link has been established with climate change, but scientists say global warming is favoring extreme weather events such as heavy precipitation causing flooding.
Russian and Kazakh Presidents Vladimir Putin and Kassym-Jomart Tokayev spoke by telephone on Tuesday and “agreed to give injunctions to activate” the work of coordinating relief and predicting meteorologists, according to the Kremlin.
Further east, the Kurgan region has launched the evacuation of several villages on the Tobol River.
In total, 62 localities are in the risk zone, according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
And the Tyumen region, in western Siberia, is also expecting record levels, and introduced a state of emergency on Monday.
The worst-hit town so far, Orsk in the Orenburg region, was flooded over the weekend after a dike there gave way.
Putin “not physically present”
Demonstrations took place there on Monday, with residents demanding accountability from the authorities despite threats from the regional prosecutor’s office against any illegal gatherings, while gatherings are strictly regulated in Russia.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov assured Tuesday that the populations affected by the floods would “receive all necessary assistance despite the difficult conditions.”
However, he admitted that Vladimir Putin did not plan to visit the regions affected by these historic floods.
“He is not physically present but he is present on this theme permanently. He deals with these issues all day,” Mr. Peskov defended.
Exiled opponent Yulia Navalnaïa, widow of anti-corruption activist Alexeï Navalny, who said she was taking up the torch from her husband who died in a Russian prison in February, denounced the authorities’ lack of preparation.
“The State must be at the service of the population. Mayors, governors and the president must ensure that the country is a pleasant place to live. This is their only task. And this government is not doing it,” she denounced on X.
In Kazakhstan, over the past two weeks and “the start of the floods, 86,000 people have been saved and evacuated, including 29,000 children,” the Kazakh Ministry of Emergency Situations said in a statement on Tuesday.
These evacuations took place in the west and north of this huge Central Asian country bordering Russia.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokaïev sharply reprimanded local authorities for their unpreparedness and last week described these floods as “perhaps the greatest natural disaster, in terms of scale and consequences, of the last 80 years”.
In total in Kazakhstan, 23,000 members of the Ministries of Emergency Situations, Interior, Defense and Secret Services are involved in rescue operations, as well as thousands of civilian volunteers, while television channels public places displayed a banner “Our strength is in unity”.