Putin rides - chips fly

On the night of March 21, about the beginning of the first, when most residents of Zhukovsky near Moscow were sleeping peacefully, in an atmosphere of complete secrecy, the Cruck Forest was discouraged. The Soviet government considered it in 1982 a specially protected natural territory (protected areas), and the current power was a good place to pass the highway. Relictic pines fell along the road, and watching this journalist of the Zhukovsky Vesti Anastasia Grigoryeva seemed that "trees fell like bursting people." All entrances to the forest were blocked by police cordons. At first they explained this with a problem with a hole on the road, later they simply began to be sent to the press service and say, as in a lawsuit: "We are here by order of the authorities, and orders are not discussed."

We arrived in Zhukovsky at the beginning of the fifth in the morning and only thanks to local colleagues who knew the city well, we were able to find a path to penetrate the forest. “I feel in the occupied territory,” said my guide when we walked around the snowdrifts to the sound of a saw.

By five in the morning, the work stopped, and, reaching the place, we saw dozens of fallen centuries -old pines and a group of silent policemen, as well as people in black with the inscription "Vityaz" on their backs. They, of course, refused comments, people in black turned away from the camera, the police habitually sent. In the press service.

The story with the Tsagovsky forest began for a long time: someone calls the starting point of 2006, when the mayor Alexander Bobovnikov, then located in the middle of his second term, came out with this idea to the government of the region, someone 2008-when Putin signed an order to create the Zhukovsky National Aircraft Building Center in the city. The road was first called the “bypass” (in Zhukovsky there are big problems with traffic jams, and the bypass road was expected as deliverance) until it turned out that it was actually “drives”: from the Ural highway (M5) to the gates of the Gromov Leah, where the famous Putin travels to two years, which Putin travels to. On the new road, the Max VIP guests will be able to calmly travel at a speed of at least 120 kilometers per hour.

In 2009, the mayor’s elections were held in the city: only on the third day Tick declared Bobovnikov the winner, while canceling the election results in 7 sites, supposedly "due to complaints from voters." These were those 7 sites where his enemy scored the most votes. The members of the commission later told, including on the camera, how the results of these elections were drawn, and from three to five thousand angry citizens went out into the streets. The protests did not lead to anything, people every time became smaller, and gradually all the protest fervor spread to the story of the forest.

Twice I witnessed rallies in defense of the Tsagov forest in Zhukovsky - in 2009 and 2010. They gathered from 1000 to 2500 people - in the hundred thousandth city a year before all swamp and sugar, this made a strong impression. However, this did not help: the authorities made it clear that the project is federal, and the case was resolved. And in order to set up all the points over the I, in the suit of the city prosecutor, the Zhukovsky court recognized the 1982 decision that the forest is protected, illegal.

Hope remained to the last. After the December elections of 2011, in which the Zhukovites gave the United Russia 19% of the vote, putting it on a shameful third place after the Communists and the Affairs, and the newly followed in Moscow decided to postpone the Crucosa of the Tsagovsky forest "because of the political moment." Everyone, of course, knew that they were going to cut the forest anyway. And, of course, they understood that it would be after the March elections of Putin. But no one expected that the deforestation would begin so quickly, and even more so at night. “We woke up - and we will not recognize our city,” they say confused people on the streets.

In the morning, volunteers for a series of single pickets come to the editorial office of the Zhukovsky Vesti. The editor -in -chief Natalya Znamenskaya and her team draw posters.

Immediately from the forest, we went to the city hall, where we were very kindly accepted by the First Deputy mayor, a former personnel officer of the FSB Stanislav Suchas. In the absence of the mayor of Alexander Bobovnikov, who has been on sick leave for two weeks for two weeks. It was he who signed the wax ticket.

"The people will never forgive you!" - Natalya Znamenskaya was indignant. “You want to hear what bastards we have cut down the forest? We are ready to say: yes, we are scum, we will chop the forest,” Stanislav Konstantinovich answered calmly. “Yes, this is bad. And who will say that this is good? Find at least one person.” But the money that the city reunite in compensation for the cut 12 hectares of pines - we are talking about 170 million rubles, of which, according to Suknov, the administration plans to do 280, they will go on useful things: for example, the resettlement of the Old Fund. Investments will come with the road to Zhukovsky.

The editor's phone is bursting, dumbfounded townspeople ask what to do. No one has an answer yet. By three o’clock in the afternoon, activists are going to go scandalous to the council of deputies. Cutting, apparently, will continue at night.