Russia faces expiry of thousands of lifts with no repair funds

Russia faces expiry of thousands of lifts with no repair funds

There is a very Russian way of measuring how worn down a country is: counting the lifts that no longer go up. According to figures circulating in the industry, 100,000 of Russia's 550,000 lifts would need to be replaced before February 2025, and there is no money for around 45,000 of them. The figure does not come from an official report but from the Russian Lift Association, which is calling for a special credit line so that homeowners' associations can afford the replacement. The underlying debate is not whether lifts break down — they do — but who pays the bill when maintenance has become a luxury.

What the Russian lift figures actually say

The starting point is a message circulating with concrete figures: of the country's 550,000 lifts, 100,000 must be replaced before February 2025, and of those, some 45,000 have no allocated funding. The Russian Lift Association calculates that the replacement of 45,000 of the 81,500 lifts in apartment buildings whose service life expires in February 2025 is not included in the building inspection plan and has no funding. It is not a decree, a law or an official statistic: it is an industry lobby asking for money. The difference matters. There is a big gap between the lift stock having a technical expiry date and there being a plan to replace them.

The nuance comes from a participant who went looking for the original source: "it is the opinion of the Russian Lift Association, which is asking for a special credit line to be peine". In other words, the news is not that the lifts are about to stop working en masse, but that the industry itself admits there is no money to maintain them. And in a country where the upkeep of collective housing was already falling short, that is another sign of gradual wear rather than imminent collapse.

From the khrushchyovka to the Korean lift: how things got here

The conversation drifts towards Soviet construction history. The khrushchyovkas, the five-storey blocks from the Khrushchev era, were built without lifts. The later brezhnevkas did include them from the start, in many cases using Western models manufactured under licence. That stock is now between forty and sixty years old. Many of those lifts have already passed their expiry date and have been patched up with machinery replacements, modernised cabins and new button panels.

The problem is not exclusively Russian. In Spain there are communities with lifts installed more than four decades ago that still work because they are inspected and parts are replaced. The difference is that there the funding framework is different: lift replacement in apartment buildings is not included in the inspection plan and has no funding, according to the industry association's calculation. And the new housing stock is being built with lifts from Eastern manufacturers, Chinese and Korean, leaving the domestic industry calling for protection and credit so as not to lose the refurbishment market.

Why there are not enough hands to fix the lifts

The other factor that comes up in the discussion is labour. Repairing a lift requires skilled technicians, and part of that workforce has been absorbed by the military industry or has emigrated. The argument being made is that those who used to repair lifts are now welding metal for the front or earning more as soldiers. There is no statistic quantifying this, but it fits the broader pattern of labour supply strains in civilian sectors.

The practical consequence is that preventive maintenance becomes more expensive and gets delayed. A lift that is not inspected does not stop working overnight: it accumulates faults, stays out of service for longer and ends up costing more to repair than to replace. The problem is not the expiry date, it is the lack of a replacement plan. And that plan, today, does not exist.

What has peine with lifts in Rostov and other regions

The case comes down to regional figures. In the Rostov region there are 513 lifts needing repair or replacement, and there is only money for 314. The remaining 199 can neither be repaired nor replaced. It is the same pattern: part of the stock gets attention and the rest is left out of the budget. It is not a blackout, it is a trickle.

The comparison with the rest of the country is inevitable. If in one specific region money is missing for 38% of the lifts that need it, the national total of 45,000 unfunded units stops looking like an exaggeration. The figure is not a forecast, it is a calculation of what is already outside the plan.

The lift as a gauge of urban maintenance

The lift is a good indicator of how a city is run. It is not segarro infrastructure, it does not make headlines, but its upkeep depends on someone paying the community fees, technicians being available and spare parts existing. When one of those three legs fails, the lift is the first service to go. It is not a collapse, it is a silent degradation.

In the Russian case, all three legs are under strain: insufficient funding, a workforce absorbed by the war and the replacement of Western suppliers with Eastern ones. The result is not that all the lifts will stop working at once, but that more and more buildings will be left without a lift for longer. And in twenty-storey blocks, that is no minor inconvenience.

What to expect from February 2025 onwards

February 2025 is the date marking the service life of the affected lifts. After that, the question is what happens to those that are not replaced. The most likely answer, judging by the figures, is that they will keep being patched up until they can give no more. There is no plan B for the 45,000 lifts without funding.

The underlying debate is whether this is a maintenance problem or a symptom of something bigger. Those defending the harshest version speak of a collapse of services. Those who qualify it point out that the Soviet stock has always run on the edge and that partial replacement is the norm. The reality, as almost always, lies in between: neither immediate collapse nor normality.

How many lifts can stop working before someone considers the problem systemic?