Russia's Tomsk Is Hit By A Garbage Collapse
- 10.02.2026, 19:22
Because of the debts to the budget.
One of Western Siberia's largest cities, Tomsk, home to nearly 545,000 people, has been experiencing problems with garbage disposal amid a worsening situation in the regional budget, which received nearly 18.5 billion Russian rubles in deficit last year.
In comments to Mayor Dmitry Makhini and Governor Vladimir Mazur, complaints about overcrowded container sites have been appearing regularly for more than a month. "Dirt, rats, piles of unremoved garbage", "Everything is piled with bags", "For weeks the garbage is not removed", - Tomsk residents write and show photos of the collapse, paid attention to the channel "Govorit NeMoskva".
The mayor's office reported that the city-owned Tomsk Regional Environmental Company ("TREC", formerly UMP "Spetsavtokhozhestvo"), which is engaged in garbage removal, owed the federal budget more than 12 million rubles in payments for negative environmental impact since 2023. Because of this, the bailiffs arrested three garbage trucks from it, as they did not find any money in the accounts. If the debt is not paid off soon, the equipment will be put up for auction.
The Deputy Mayor Nikolai Glebovich said that "TREC" can't pay up because the contractor it works for owes it for the garbage removal service. A lawsuit is now underway to recover those funds. "Until the debts to TREK are paid off, the organization has no money to pay off tax payments," the official stressed.
He also noted that the authorities offered to seize the property of "TRECK", "the seizure of which would not interfere with economic activity", but the bailiffs preferred a different way, and now the mayor's office is looking for options "how to remove garbage".
Last year the budget of the Tomsk region was executed with a deficit of almost 18.5 billion rubles, which is twice as much as the plan (8.9 billion). This is 14.8% of all expenditures (about 125 billion). In the structure of revenues, which amounted to almost Br106.4 billion, taxes on profit of organizations sagged badly - the budget received only 58.8% of the plan, or Br14.7 billion. The report of the regional finance department showed that the deficit was mainly covered by funds received from bonds and loans.