The authorities cut down the trust of the people at the root

On March 21, a special operation was launched in Zhukovsky near Moscow to cut down the Tsagovsky forest. Secretly, in the dark, without warning. The Zhukovites, like partisans, penetrated the forest cordoned off by police cordons and Chopovites. They tried to stop the mass extermination of relic pines, which before their eyes were sacrificed to the highway. Didn't save. The forest is no more...

On March 21, a special operation was launched in Zhukovsky near Moscow to cut down the Tsagovsky forest. Secretly, in the dark, without warning. The Zhukovites, like partisans, penetrated the forest cordoned off by police cordons and Chopovites. They tried to stop the mass extermination of relic pines, which before their eyes were sacrificed to the highway. Didn't save. The forest is no more

On a sunny morning of March 22, taxi driver Andrey is perplexed looking at the bald Tupolevskoe highway, barbed wire spirals and fallen mast pines. “It’s like after the fascist bombing,” he says and curses the local administration, which stubbornly lobbied for the unpopular project of a transit route through the forest, ignoring the mass protests, rallies and subbotniks in the Tsagovo forest.

The logging went like a blitzkrieg. The chainsaws of the Mosavtodor screeched at the first hour of the night on March 21, by four in the morning of the 22nd, the last century-old pine tree collapsed, which turned out to be on the way of the builders of the six-lane road to the main checkpoints of the LII. M.M. Gromova. According to one of the Zhukovsky bloggers Alexander Kuznetsov, the people have already dubbed the barbaric felling of the clearing a special operation: a night, sudden, cynical.

Destruction

On the evening of March 19, the head of the urban planning department, Dmitry Loshchinin, confirmed in an interview with the local newspaper Zhukovskie Vesti that the so-called logging ticket had been signed. The autograph on the document was put by the acting mayor Stanislav Suknov, since the head Alexander Bobovnikov went on sick leave. The next day, the newspaper published an emergency special issue of SOS with the headline "Tsagovsky forest sentenced to death." According to unofficial information, it was planned to start felling not earlier than Thursday.

On March 20, a rumor spread around the city that riot police would arrive soon. Near the forest and the building of the police department, paddy wagons and employees of the Vityaz private security company were seen. At ten in the evening, all the approaches to the Tsagovsky forest were cordoned off by the police and traffic police. Street lighting is off. A group of correspondents who tried to walk to the forest were stopped by security officers and expelled from the forest. One of the Chopovites, Nikolai Manukov, explained the reason as follows: “Planned work is underway to improve the city.”

In the first hour of the night near the Tupolevskoye highway, under the dazzling light of searchlights, there was a piercing screech of chainsaws and the noise of fallen trees. A handful of residents who managed to make their way to the forest in a roundabout way saw how lumberjacks disfigure a natural monument.

No one was given a copy of the logging decree. On March 22 alone, ZhV journalists obtained a document in which 3,000 trees were sentenced to felling. Two days earlier, the mayor's press secretary, Yevgeny Solodilin, spoke of 8,000 pine trees going under the felling. Zhukovsky environmental activist Yevgeny Kaminsky, who carefully examined a fresh clearing, called the same figure. “Perhaps, the document was hidden in order to prevent going to court about the monstrous discrepancy in the number of recorded and actually cut down trees,” the journalists suggest.

Moreover, the officials showed amazing speed in preparing the special operation, managing within one day on March 19 not only to receive a written request from the Mosavtodor for permission to cut down, but also to examine the forest, counting three thousand trees scheduled for cutting down, and sign a felling ticket. The obligatory clause of the Decree - "early notification of residents" was not fulfilled: the publication of the official newspaper "Aviagrad Zhukovsky" with a message about the upcoming felling was delayed for one day, and people went to bed without knowing about the upcoming invasion of lumberjacks.

The administration has prepared two survey acts and two resolutions. The forest along them is divided into two sections - they cut down two nights:

Political suicide

At noon on March 21, the first person appeared at the administration building with a poster “The authorities betrayed the Zhukovites. We won't forget, we won't forgive! He opened a series of single pickets. Every half an hour, faces and posters changed: “Deputies, the death of the forest is on your conscience”, “Mayor, resign! We will not forgive the Tsagovsky forest”, “Power, you have created madness”, “The mayor cut out my lungs” ...

At three o'clock in the afternoon, about thirty Zhukovites came to the White House. They wanted to meet with the deputies. On the ground floor, they were detained by the police and employees of the mayor's office. “Chairman of the City Council Igor Markov ordered not to let anyone in, because the reception of residents is not on the agenda of the working meeting,” official Igor Frolov repeated. One of the journalists managed to sneak into the elevator, break into Markov's office and find out that he did not give such an order. The guards surrendered under the onslaught of the inhabitants, who nevertheless went to the meeting.

“If everything is legal, why was the work carried out with such secrecy?” - asked local activist Nikolai Ishchenko. Stanislav Suknov, who signed the permission to cut, explained: “In order not to paralyze the city. To start logging during the day is to bring the city to collapse.”

The Chairman of the Council of Deputies proposed to organize a commission to control compensatory and environmental measures, which the residents immediately called the “stump commission”. “There has been a tragedy! - broke down on the cry of the inhabitants. “We demand that the felling be stopped immediately!” AND ABOUT. Mayor Suknov was adamant: "We will not cancel anything: this decision was made a long time ago."

Tatyana, a Zhukovsky woman, who left the meeting, said helplessly: “Today, the authorities committed political suicide.”

Wrestling history

For more than three years, the inhabitants of Zhukovsky have been actively fighting for the forest massif, preserved from the time of the Meshcherskaya lowland. For the first time, talk about the possible destruction of part of the forest arose in 2008, when Vladimir Putin signed an order to create a National Aircraft Building Center in Zhukovsky. Information has been leaked from the local administration about an upcoming project for a route with a speed limit of 120 km/h to deliver VIPs to the biennial MAKS air show.

Zhukovsky is a transit city, and residents have long been waiting for the construction of a bypass road promised by the mayor. In 2009, the residents of Zhukovsky were surprised to learn that the head agreed to build an access road that runs into a narrow two-lane road without the possibility of expanding it, and even through a forest that has the status of a natural monument of local importance. The administration finds a way to rid the forest of environmental literacy, remaining behind the scenes. The then prosecutor Alexander Salomatkin turned out to be the main tool in the struggle of the authorities against the forest integrity. It was he who disputed what hardly anyone would have thought to dispute - the decision of the executive committee of the City Council in 1982, according to which the Tsagovsky forest became a natural monument. In particular, the prosecutor based doubts about the legitimacy of the thirty-year-old document on the fact that the decision was not published in the local media, which at that time simply did not exist in the closed city. All court instances satisfied the prosecutor's claim.

The attempts of five deputies of the "Forest Commission" to restore the status of the forest and thus protect it from cutting down were vigorously blocked by the Zhukovsky executive power.

The biggest test for the mayor was civil protest: a rally for the forest, which brought together more than 2,500 thousand Zhukovites and regular subbotniks in the Tsagovsky forest, which were attended by three hundred people.

Nevertheless, the first part of the access road was put into operation last summer. Corteges of officials managed to appreciate the advantages of the traffic-free route that brought them to Zhukovsky.

Residents understood that the delay in logging was due to the upcoming elections. The struggle for the forest was reflected in the results of the elections to the Duma: United Russia in Zhukovsky gained 19%, giving way to the Communist Party and Just Russia. At the presidential election, volunteer observers and the media literally grabbed the hands of not only the throwers, but also the chairman of the commission with hundreds of ballots for Putin, which he took from the safe after the end of voting. Even with massive falsifications, the results of the elections in Zhukovsky were dragging on to the second round.

After the elections, everyone was waiting for the announcement of the upcoming felling, but they did not imagine that the sentence would be executed so soon and vilely.

Today, the authorities have deprived the inhabitants of Zhukovsky of a unique coniferous forest, thereby rallying and multiplying the civil movement. “The point of no return has been passed,” say those who opposed the extermination of pines, “we will seek resignation and cover with shame everyone who had a hand in the history of the death of the Tsagov forest.”

“The felling of the forest could not be stopped, it has already been carried out, but the forest can and should be preserved,” says human rights activist Yury Lapin. - Felling is not yet asphalt, and it is possible and necessary to plant trees at the site of the clearing and restore the status of a protected area. And it is necessary to achieve planting and forests, and power. The second is conditional, say, in the form of standing on the weekend for mercy with a poster “I ruined the property of Zhukovsky - the Tsagovsky forest. Good for moral and physical health.

Anastasia GRIGORYEVA,

"Zhukovskiye news"

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