The event that even managed to even make the news here in the United States, was the disaster that struck the massive Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant in southern Siberia. An explosion in the powerhouse at the base of the dam killed more than 70 people and caused electric shortages across the region. A friend sent me the picture of the dam (pre-accident) below:
Just to get an idea of how big the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam is - it stands more than 600 feet tall and stretches over a half-mile, holding back the Yenisei, one of the biggest rivers in Russia (think of it on a par with Hoover Dam in Nevada). Officials are still investigating what exactly caused the accident (the site EnglishRussia has a number of post-blast photos here), but speculation is that one of the dam's massive electric-generating turbines malfunctioned leading to a sudden release of water pressure that blew apart the powerhouse, killing some 70 people working inside. A spokeswoman for Power Machines, the firm that installed the turbines at the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam when it was opened in 1978 said that the turbines had long exceeded their working lifespans and shouldn't have still been in use.
And that's the bigger problem that the blast at Sayano-Shushenskaya underlines, the poor state of much of Russia's infrastructure. A few boom years this decade haven't provided nearly enough money to repair all of the Russian infrastructure that was neglected during the two previous decades (not to mention that a lot of money never even made it to their earmarked projects thanks to rampant corruption). Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is pledging to repair Sayano-Shushenskaya, even though early projections put the repair cost at more than $1 billion.
Meanwhile the city of Nazran, Ingushetia, in the volatile North Caucasus region, was rocked by a massive truck bombing against a local police headquarters that killed 20 people and wounded more than 100 others. While it was the largest terrorist bombing in the region in years, its far from the first. In June, the president of Ingushetia was badly wounded in an suicide bomb-assassination attempt; he survived but several of his bodyguards did not.
The North Caucasus is also home to Chechnya, where Russia's fought two bloody wars since the end of the Soviet Union, and from where Chechen terrorists launched a campaign of high-profile attacks across Russia in the mid-2000s. A sort of peace came to Chechnya after Russia turned control of the republic over to Chechen President/strongman Ramzan Kadyrov (who is accused of massive human rights violations in his campaign to subdue Chechnya). But the situation is like squeezing a balloon - a crackdown in Chechnya seems to have just driven insurgents into the neighboring territories of Ingushetia and Dagestan where they're continuing their terror campaign.
Even worse for Russia is that now there are signs that their strategy of just turning Chechnya over to Kadyrov and ignoring whatever he does so long as it brings peace, might not be working. Days after the Ingushetia blast there were smaller bombings within Chechnya, some say as a direct challenge to the rule of Pres. Kadyrov. Meanwhile Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev is vowing to destroy the North Caucasus terrorists, saying they must be "liquidated without emotion."
That's the kind of tough talk that could set the stage for a third Russian war in the North Caucasus, something Russia would desperately like to avoid since it would quickly devolve into a guerrilla war that they can't possibly win (insert your comparisons to Afghanistan here). Though Medvedev has also said that poverty is a main cause of unrest in the North Caucasus and slammed the police in Ingushetia for not doing a better job at protecting themselves.
Big events in Russia for sure, but sadly a possible indication of things to come.
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