Russia Says Company Towns Engulfed by Crisis as Budget Runs Dry
This article is for subscribers only.
A crisis has spread to almost every third Russian company town, where one employer dominates the local economy, and only a fraction of them will get government aid, officials said on Wednesday.
“We have 319 monocities, and 94 of them are classified as in crisis,” Economy Minister Alexey Ulyukayev said in Usolye-Sibirskoye, a town in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, at a meeting led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “According to our estimates, the funds allocated in the budget for four years will be enough for 20-30 monocities.”