About 70 workers at the troubled Primorskii power plant at Luchegorsk began a new hunger strike on 3 September to protest the Russian energy company's failure to adhere to the promised timetable for repaying wage arrears, ITAR-TASS reported on 4 September. Following an 11-day hunger strike a month ago, workers were promised that arrears for May and June would be paid by 30 August. Also in Primore, continuing shortages of fuel oil because of the power plants' inability to pay suppliers are leading to new electricity cuts to consumers. ITAR-TASS reported that beginning on 2 September some areas were suffering cuts of up to 16 hours a day. Only 695 meters of the 15 km tunnel remains to be built.
Banks are no longer heavily dependent on inter-bank overnight loans.
This is partly because bank lending to clients is still very low. Dmitriev stressed that bank balance sheets are extremely unreliable and do not reflect their real asset structure. The main reason why a sudden crash of the banking system is unlikely is that the banking system per se is weakly developed. Ekspert on 2 September carried a rating of the top 200 companies in Russia. If these companies were included on the list of top U.S. firms, they would rank 15th and 25th respectively.