In Zhukovsky, the camp of defenders of the Tsagovsky forest was demolished

By decision of the city administration, hired workers destroyed the tent camp of activists who oppose deforestation for the construction of a new road. Police officers cordoned off the area and detained several defenders of the Tsagovsky forest. Natalya Znamenskaya, editor-in-chief of the Zhukovskie Vesti newspaper, told the details to presenter Anna Kazakova.

–– Tell us how it all started.

–– It started with the fact that yesterday and the day before yesterday everything was fine, veterans of the Great Patriotic War came to us, we sang songs with them. This morning the camp staff called and said that the police had arrived and were starting to demolish the camp. At the signal, we all ran to the camp, whoever could, because many, of course, were at work, so I was in the editorial office, today we are making the next issue of the newspaper.

There were a lot of police, at least 50 people. They surrounded the camp on all sides and didn’t let me in, but I still broke through. At this time, we didn’t even have time to take our things, nothing, at that time the police brought a bus with guest workers, Tajiks, and ordered them to demolish the tents. They started tearing down the tents, I approached them and said “you have no right.” When I approached the guest workers, they walked away from me a little scared. At this time, the deputy police chief Nemeshayev shouted to them “you were told to do it - do it,” and they then came up in the same way. And several times this was the story: they went there, then there, they didn’t know what to do.

– Did you ask to see any documents?

– Yes, we demanded documents, took out some documents, at that time employees of the mayor’s office from the department of public safety and emergency situations approached and said that the camp was being demolished on the basis of the decree of the city mayor declaring a fire emergency in the city forests.

The funny thing is that it's raining right now. In addition, the decree of April 30 declared this emergency situation. We went to the camp all this time. Moreover, we made sure that there were no fires in the camp or in the forest. When there were holiday picnics in the forest, we approached people and asked them to put out the fires, and people were very understanding about this, they put out the fire. But there were no police, no firefighters, no one at that time. Today, under this pretext, they came to demolish the camp. It was a very wonderful scene.

–– Was it demolished in the end? What is now at the site of the camp?

– Now they have demolished everything, without showing us any documents, without making an inventory. They said that there was a fire danger in the forest, so they collected all our things, loaded them into the car and drove away, leaving the clearing in a completely wild state. Now, we have just collected the garbage that they scattered around the camp. And we don’t even know yet where our things are, where the tents are. People there had, as someone says, computers, they had cameras, they had telephones. In general, there is nothing like this now. Three of our boys were detained for disobeying police actions. They just told me that they were released without drawing up a report. Today we will pitch tents at the city hall.

–– At the Zhukovsky City Hall?

–– Yes, at the Zhukovsky City Hall. The mayor's office does not recognize, by the way, this is also a very remarkable fact in itself: the administration until today did not recognize the forest as a forest, it said that we have trees and shrubs. And therefore, you can build here, you can reduce the volume of this forest zone here. They talked about it, but they issued a decree about the danger of people being in the forests.

“We’ll be pitching tents at City Hall.”