Unyielding activism: How Russia’s urban preservation movement continues its fight under military dictatorship

At the end of February, the Ministry of Culture responded to the backlash with a press release saying the new rules did not weaken protections, but only “eliminated excessive regulations.” Protection zones were being abolished solely for objects that do not extend above the surface, it said. Safeguarding the surroundings of landmark sites was “not expedient,” since “special urban planning rules” already applied. Burial sites, the ministry argued, did not need protective status because “such objects must be assigned a territory within which capital construction is prohibited.”

Moscow’s heritage left unprotected

Another case — regional but no less striking — unfolded in Moscow, where more than 1,500 identified cultural heritage sites lost protection all at once on July 1, 2025. These structures were still awaiting review for inclusion in the register of protected objects and, under the old rules, would have been shielded from demolition and unapproved alteration until that process was complete.

Archnadzor activists said the Moscow mayor’s office blocked new applications for historical and cultural reviews back in 2019, and that the authorities were reviewing an average of only 14 of the already-submitted applications per year. At that pace, preservationists calculated, it would have taken the Moscow Heritage Department 123 years and five months to evaluate all of the city’s identified cultural heritage sites.

But that timetable is now irrelevant. In November 2024, the Moscow City Duma passed a new version of the law “On Cultural Heritage Sites in Moscow,” which stipulated that buildings not reviewed by July 1, 2025, would automatically lose their protected status. The Moscow Heritage Department did manage to evaluate 120 sites and add them to the state register, but legal protections for the rest were lifted when the new law came into effect.