It is minus 30C (-22F), and the heating is off. In their houses people are huddling under piles of fur coats, trying desperately to keep warm. But these are not the Eastern European victims of Russia’s gas war with Ukraine. These are Russians – Siberians in the city of Ulan-Ude, where the local heating system has gone on the blink. This being a common occurrence in Russia, it hardly made the national, let alone the international, news.

Such crises are routine. An extreme example came in the far east in 2001, when the heating failed, the water pipes froze and cracked and the temperature reached minus 50C. In Vladivostok the locals said that the conditions were worse than during the war. Even the water supply failed as there was no electricity to pump it up the city’s hilly streets.

Russia’s vast energy resources are a blessing and a curse. The export of oil and gas brings in revenue but blunts the need to diversify the economy. Most of the time, Russians luxuriate in central heating, still subsidised by the state, and worry less than Europeans about their bills. They sit at their kitchen tables in their vests and cannot believe that the British wear sweaters in their own homes. But at least three times a year Russians suffer the peculiar discomforts of their system. For a month in summer the hot water is turned off in all apartments so the pipes can be maintained. In spring and autumn bureaucrats take a centralised decision when to turn the heating off and on again. So if it is an unusually cold April or an unseasonably hot September, you can freeze or boil in a Russian flat.

A view often expressed here is that compared with the hardy Russians, most Europeans are wimps. “Russians are used to suffering, what with the war and crises and poverty,” Nina Timofeyevna, a pensioner, told me matter-of-factly. “But people in Europe are more comfortable. They aren’t used to stress.”

There was more sympathy from Anna Abramova and Tatyana Gretskaya, two teachers muffled up in mink as they strolled in the snow (antifur sentiment is hard to come by in the Moscow winter). “Of course we’re sorry for them; they’re people like us,” they said. “Ukraine is to blame for the crisis; it is doing what it likes. And simple people are paying for the obstinacy of politicians. That’s always the way, in our bitter experience.”

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