Translated material
Cut down 8 million
Environmentalists are required to compensate the general contractor for work in the Khimki forest
The echo of public hearings on the government project for the construction of the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway has not yet died down, and the general contractor of the work, Teplotekhniki LLC, has gone on the offensive against the defenders of the Khimki Forest. This coming Thursday, September 23, the first meeting will be held on the claim of this company against the leader of the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest, Evgenia Chirikova, and ten other activists. The “Greens,” whose opinion, we recall, was also urged to be taken into account by President Dmitry Medvedev, is accused of “obstructing the approach of equipment to the work site” in the forest belt in the summer. Losses from the confrontation with environmentalists in Teplotekhnika, headed by the President of the Union of Evangelical Christian Churches of Russia Alexander Semchenko, are estimated at 7.998 million rubles.As Teplotehnik LLC told Vremya Novostey, the lawsuit, which was filed with the Savyolovsky Court in Moscow on August 12, was drawn up on the basis of an act prepared by the company’s employees and including damages “for downtime of equipment, workers, as well as for site security.” . The main claim of the builders is that by their actions, forest defenders prevented Teplotekhnik from fulfilling the contract for preparatory work for laying the first section of the highway, 43 km long.
Let us recall that the confrontation between environmentalists and the general contractor entered the active phase on July 15 - it was on this day that the main work began on cutting down the forest belt through which, according to the government-approved project, a section of the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway should pass. Arriving at the forest and seeing that the cutting of trees was in full swing, the “greens” asked the workers to provide felling tickets, but they never received the documents.
Having stopped the felling of the forest and driven away the loggers, activists of the Movement for the Defense of the Khimki Forest decided to set up a camp right on the site of the clearing that had formed. But they could not hold out in the forest for long - on July 23, well-built young people came to the camp and rudely asked the forest defenders to leave the logging site. However, the main cleanup was carried out by officers of the Khimki riot police, who came to the camp a few hours after the thugs and detained the main core of the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest for violating public order and lighting fires. Even then, the head of Teplotekhnika, Alexander Semchenko, stated that delays in logging activities could disrupt the deadlines for fulfilling his company’s contractual obligations to the construction customer - the Federal State Institution "Roads of Russia". At the same time, he mentioned possible lawsuits against forest defenders.
According to leader Evgenia Chirikova, Mr. Semchenko’s lawsuit looks “very cynical against the backdrop of the eventful confrontation between the Greens and Teplotekhniki LLC.” “I would like to remind you that we were crushed by cars, put in a bullpen, intimidated by thugs, but the police never responded to a single fact of an obvious violation of the law,” Ms. Chirikova noted in an interview with a Vremya Novostei correspondent. The leader of the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest does not rule out that environmentalists may prepare a counterclaim against Mr. Semchenko. The “Greens” were outraged by the interview of the director of “Teplotekhnika” to the newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, in which Mr. Semchenko admitted that, on his direct orders, provocateurs were introduced into the environmentalists’ camp, who set the police against environmental activists.
Lawyer of the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest Andrey Morgulev believes that Teplotekhnika’s claim has no legal basis at all, since the contract of the builders with the Federal State Institution “Roads of Russia”, which environmentalists allegedly disrupted, ended on December 31, 2009. “And therefore all the work that was carried out in the forest after this period can be considered illegal,” Mr. Morgulev said in a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent. Teplotekhnik LLC, of course, disagrees with environmentalists. “The work was carried out in accordance with the schedule on the basis of an additional agreement, which is an integral part of the government contract,” the company explained to Vremya Novostei.