Some 50 kilometers from the Kremlin, at the start of this icy new year, entire neighborhoods have been left without heating, plunged into the cold. This is leading to anger among residents, an embarrassment for authorities. At a time when winter is proving particularly harsh, with temperatures regularly dipping below -25°C in the capital and its surrounding area, Podolsk and Klimovsk have become the epicenter of this sudden wave of exasperation.

In these two commuter towns of Moscow's remote southern suburbs, several accidents on communal heating pipes have provided a reminder of the recurrence of old infrastructure maintenance problems, and above all, of under-investment in the network. "We're cold! It's impossible to stay at home. We're freezing, and the officials in charge of heating are lying to us."

Over the past few days, these messages have proliferated on local social media sites in Podolsk and Klimovsk. They're illustrated with photos of families bundled up under blankets at home, or in front of a fire in their backyard. Some residents have launched petitions. Others are demanding the resignation of local officials.

The anger has been all the greater in recent years, as bills for communal services, particularly heating, have continued to rise, squeezing the purchasing power of the poorest families. But long-standing infrastructure problems remain the same: dilapidated public services, sometimes in dire need of modernization investment since the Soviet era, and local authorities ignoring the real state of the heating networks and passing the blame onto others.

The Moscow regional government initially blamed the accidents on the private owners of the heating networks. In official speeches, however, it has usually been a question of simple "incidents" due to an abnormal cold snap, and therefore due to the sharp rise in consumption.

Governor Andrey Vorobyov has provided reassurance, with his press service announcing that heating would be resumed as soon as possible. But on the ground, many families are continuing to survive in the cold. They accuse the authorities of lying. In Podolsk, a collective complaint has been lodged against the deputy head of the municipal administration for abuse of power with serious consequences.

"Podolsk administration, who are you trying to fool? Yesterday you closed the governor's page [on the official local website] to comments, and today you're going to delete the message? The telephone numbers for getting help don't even work anymore," wrote one resident on local social media, recalling that infrastructure replacement work has been postponed year after year. The temporary absence of some local specialists, who have left to fight in Ukraine, may also explain the network's technical failures in some cases.

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