MOSCOW (AP) – Electricity outages crippled large sections of the Russian capital and nearby regions Wednesday, forcing hospitals to resort to emergency power and stranding thousands of commuters in stuffy subways during an unseasonable heatwave.

President Vladimir Putin, in an unusually quick and stern reaction, criticized the state-controlled power monopoly and its controversial head.

The outages, which began with an explosion and fire at a 40-year-old substation, underlined the poor condition of much of Russia’s infrastructure, even in the prosperous capital region.

“We primarily believe that the main reason is that the equipment is worn out,” said Magarita Nagoga, a Unified Electricity Systems spokeswoman.

In televised comments, Putin blamed the company’s leadership.

“I think it’s possible to talk about the inadequate attention that the UES leadership has paid to the current activities of the company,” he said.

His statement, coming only a few hours after the outages hit, was a sharp contrast to his often-criticized slow public responses to disasters such as the Kursk nuclear submarine sinking and last year’s Beslan school-hostage crisis.

No injuries were reported in the outages, that began spreading in a chain reaction at mid-morning. The shutdown of subways and trolleybuses forced tens of thousands of people to reach their destinations on foot, jamming sidewalks and mopping their brows in an unseasonal heatwave.

Russian Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said 20 hospitals lost electricity supplies, forcing them to resort to backup power.

The Interior Ministry, which controls the police, also reportedly lost power for a period.

The electricity grid, Unified Energy Systems, is headed by Anatoly Chubais, widely despised by ordinary Russians as the architect of the privatization programs of the 1990s under which a few businessmen became extraordinarily wealthy while most Russians watched their economic security slip away.

He also is a founder of one of the liberal parties that has consistently criticized Putin and Chubais has spoken out against the prosecution of powerful tycoon and Kremlin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Chubais, who survived a still unsolved assassination attempt in March, was quick to acknowledge responsibility in the outage.

The prosecutor-general’s office later announced that it had opened a criminal inquiry into the Unified Energy Systems management for negligence and abuse of authority.

Subways started returning to service at mid-afternoon, some four hours after they stopped, but crowds of commuters had to walk several miles home at the end of the day because many stations remained closed, the NTV television channel reported.

Ministry of Emergency Situations spokesman Viktor Beltsov said the outages hit wide areas of south of Moscow. The problems extended as far as the Tula region, 120 miles to the south, Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko told the lower house of parliament.

The Interfax news agency reported an explosion at a chemical factory in the Tula region that resulted from the power outage, sending nitric oxide into the air. Emergency officials advised residents to stay inside their homes and shut their windows, the agency said, but there were no reports of residents becoming ill.

The power failure caused some apartment buildings to lose their water supply and forced suspension of trading on both of Moscow’s stock exchanges, news reports said. The Central Bank issued a statement warning that some bank transfers and ATM service may have been affected, Ekho Moskvy radio reported.

Passengers were evacuated from stalled subway trains, Interfax cited system spokesman Dmitri Gaev as saying. Passengers waiting for trains were asked to leave the stations, but hundreds of people remained on the platforms, impatiently peering into the tunnels. “Like always, they’re not telling us anything,” said Lena Trofimova, 44, who was waiting for a bus near the Kremlin after leaving a nearby subway station.

Along Moscow’s Leninsky Prospekt, a major north-south thoroughfare, the sidewalks were crammed with people walking south, trying to head to their home in residential districts. Some looked confusedly at maps and others tried to shove into packed city buses.

But no disorder was reported and most of the affected people appeared to take the inconvenience with stoic resignation, even despite unusually warm temperatures that reached near 85 degrees for a third day.

“We’ve lived through hunger. We’ve lived through cold. We’ve lived through the Soviet Union,” said a 56-year-old man who identified himself only as Alexander. “This is all small change compared to what we’ve been through.”

AP-ES-05-25-05 2016EDT

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