You won’t reach any state

Regional authorities respond to environmentalists' protests much more harshly than federal authorities. It’s as if distance gives carte blanche for violence. But this is wrong logic.

Two weeks ago, in the city of Pervouralsk, Chelyabinsk region, ecologist Stepan Chernogubov checked whether there was a discharge from the sump of the Russian Chrome 1915 enterprise into a tributary of the Chusovaya River. At first he was threatened, and later, on May 5, unknown people attacked him and beat him in front of his wife. It was then established that Stepan Chernogubov was beaten by plainclothes police. It is unknown whether this attack will have consequences for those who beat Chernogubov.

Photo: Greenpeace Russia

But it is known that such attacks remain unpunished. You don’t have to go far: that week there was a funeral service for Mikhail Beketov, a journalist and defender of the Khimki Forest. Mikhail was a strong and courageous man; through his newspaper he reported that local authorities were allowing the start of cutting down trees for the highway. Beketov was beaten cruelly, inhumanly, brutally.

He was admitted to the hospital with a traumatic brain injury, a concussion, a broken leg and multiple hematomas. As a result, his leg and fingers were amputated, he lost his speech and became disabled.
And recently Beketov died. He died after choking on food, which was the result of an old injury: over two years of artificial respiration, numerous scars formed in the trachea. The people who attacked Beketov, as well as those who set them against the defender of the forest, are unknown.

The authorities think like in Gogol’s comedy: they say, from our steppes you will not reach any state, no matter how much you ride. Neither to the state, nor to public censure, nor to the law. Therefore, supposedly you can do whatever you want. Do not pay attention to pollution, cut down the forest (despite the fact that it is near Moscow, the law of “remoteness” also applies). Do not investigate cases of beatings of environmentalists.

We have never avoided important problems, because environmental disasters affect us, even if they were very far away. We cannot say: it happened too far from us, it will not affect us. Nature doesn't think so. Nature knows how strong the threads we are connected with are.

There is no need to run anywhere for justice: clean water in the Chusovaya River is needed primarily by those who live in the Chelyabinsk region. The forest is needed by those who live next to it and know how pleasant it is to breathe clean air.

The authorities are not waiting for an auditor from the capital, because they know that there won’t be one from there. We, those who need our rivers and lands, should not wait for him either. Because we are the auditors.