The Ministry of Natural Resources of the russian federation will establish a government commission for the development of the water management systems of the Volga and Don river basins to address the issue of river shallowing. This information is reported by russian media.
Russian authorities have acknowledged that the shallowing of the Volga and Don rivers currently affects over 80 million people.
"In the summer and fall of 2023, residents of the Saratov, Samara, Astrakhan, Rostov regions, and Tatarstan began to express concern that the water levels in the rivers had dropped to a critical level. In social networks, residents wrote that new islands were appearing, disruptions in navigation had begun, riverbeds were becoming covered with silt, and fish were dying", - the media report.
It is noted that in 2023, the minimum water inflow into the Volga was recorded in the last 25 years.
The government commission is expected to "develop additional measures for balanced water consumption in low-water areas of the Volga and Don river basins, address issues of redistributing water discharge from the reservoirs of the Volga-Kama cascade and the Tsimlyansk reservoir, as well as plan and determine optimal modes for inundating the Lower Volga in the spring".
Presumably, under these circumstances, the russian side will have little concern for the issues of the "dehydrated" occupied Donbas and the promised "water from the Don" deliveries to the region.