Natalya Veresova has already put a gift for her 12-year-old daughter Katya under the small Christmas tree in their two-room apartment: a bottle of clean drinking water.
"I'm ready to meet the poison," the 36-year-old school teacher says, as she gestures around at the numerous urns, canisters, buckets and basins scattered around the apartment -- all filled with water.
In this city of about 580,000 people, anticipation is building as the holidays near but it is for an event far more sobering than Christmas and New Year's.
PHOTO: AFP
A toxic slick of chemicals that spewed last month from an explosion at a Chinese factory upriver is predicted to arrive in Khabarovsk sometime next week and authorities are scrambling to prepare for what some residents have called a catastrophe on the scale of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
The Nov. 13 spill, which disrupted water supplies to millions of Chinese and strained relations with Moscow, reached the Amur River, along the Russian border on Friday, and was expected to reach Khabarovsk later on this week, Russian emergency officials said.
Officials say the spill's concentration has dispersed somewhat and, combined with activated charcoal donated by the Chinese government, this means they will not have to shut down the city's water.
Still, all around this city perched on the high right bank of the Amur River, about 6,100km east of Moscow, residents are preparing for the worst -- buying up bottled water, filling canisters from the taps and from outdoor ground wells, a task made more complicated by the minus 30oC daytime temperatures.
"China wants to poison us so that they can take over the Far East," said 56-year-old Alexander Shvaiko as he filled a canister from an outdoor well.
Cafes in the city have posted signs reading "Our food is prepared from clean, bottled water," and the price for bottled water sold in stores has increased markedly, despite government efforts to prevent price gouging.
Shutting off water to Khabarovsk's systems could also prove disastrous for a city where apartments and homes are heated almost exclusively by radiators and forced hot-water. Many people have started buying electric heaters, which could overload the city's power grid, officials say.
Lyubov Kondratyeva, a water expert at the local branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, accused China of deceiving Russia about the true extent of the spill and the exact nature of the chemicals, a view shared by many Khabarovsk residents.
The regional governor, Viktor Ishaev, said in televised comments recently, that residents were "China's hostages."
"China is not only hiding information, but they are misinforming us," Kondtratyeva said.
"I'm afraid to even think about the consequences if the poisonous materials nevertheless get into Khabarovsk's water," she said.
BRUSHED OFF: An ambassador to Australia previously said that Beijing does not see a reason to apologize for its naval exercises and military maneuvers in international areas China set off alarm bells in New Zealand when it dispatched powerful warships on unprecedented missions in the South Pacific without explanation, military documents showed. Beijing has spent years expanding its reach in the southern Pacific Ocean, courting island nations with new hospitals, freshly paved roads and generous offers of climate aid. However, these diplomatic efforts have increasingly been accompanied by more overt displays of military power. Three Chinese warships sailed the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand in February, the first time such a task group had been sighted in those waters. “We have never seen vessels with this capability
A Japanese city would urge all smartphone users to limit screen time to two hours a day outside work or school under a proposed ordinance that includes no penalties. The limit — which would be recommended for all residents in Toyoake City — would not be binding and there would be no penalties incurred for higher usage, the draft ordinance showed. The proposal aims “to prevent excessive use of devices causing physical and mental health issues... including sleep problems,” Mayor Masafumi Koki said yesterday. The draft urges elementary-school students to avoid smartphones after 9pm, and junior-high students and older are advised not
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
POWER CONFLICT: The US president threatened to deploy National Guards in Baltimore. US media reports said he is also planning to station troops in Chicago US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to deploy National Guard troops to yet another Democratic stronghold, the Maryland city of Baltimore, as he seeks to expand his crackdown on crime and immigration. The Republican’s latest online rant about an “out of control, crime-ridden” city comes as Democratic state leaders — including Maryland Governor Wes Moore — line up to berate Trump on a high-profile political stage. Trump this month deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, in a widely criticized show of force the president said amounts to a federal takeover of US capital policing. The Guard began carrying