Thieves steal kilometres of cable

Every time the company reinstalls the power cables, thieves with a misguided grasp of Russia's new enterpreneurial ethos quickly strip the cables out to sell the metal for scrap.

In the latest incident, the villagers of Razdol, without a basic electricity supply for almost a year, clubbed together to help pay for the company to reinstall five kilometres of cable leading to their village, only to see the power lines stolen within the space of two days.

Resignation

According to Russian TV, restoring the cables would cost an estimated 250,000 roubles ($80,000), which the company has said it is reluctant to pay.

"It's an unlucky village," said a spokesman for the power company.

Villagers face a long, bleak winter

"From time to time we restore the power lines, but thieves pinch them and more besides."

As preparations to see in the New Year - the most important celebration of the year in Russia - got under way, Kaluga's residents huddled around paraffin stoves, busy trying to tune in battery-operated TVs.

One old man seemed resigned to the situation. "My son's got a little portable telly," he said. "Maybe I'll bring it over here and hitch it up to a battery and watch something - or maybe I'll just down a bottle and go to bed."

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.