Translated material
"We will kill you and burn your homes"
On Sunday night, February 17, in the Altai village of Verkh-Biysk, the house of Vladimir Shvetsov, a local resident actively resisting forest cutting in the vicinity of his village and Taurus Lake, was burned 30 kilometers from Verkh-Biysk. Last Monday, Vladimir stood in a picket near the building of the Embassy in Novosibirsk and handed over to the Presidential Presidential Representative to the Siberian Federal District Sergey Chanipolo a collective appeal to Putin with a request for help from residents of the Turochak district. And today he personally needed help. He told the correspondent of Siberia. Real about the details of the fire and threats to him.
- At about three o’clock in the morning I heard the barking of the dogs: “Caucasian” and “German” in my aviary in the yard, barking exactly the same when strangers come, ”says Vladimir. - He got up, felt the smell of smoke. He left the hall to the veranda and saw that the sofa, the curtain and the roof instantly, right before our eyes, began to blaze. Literally like a flash of lightning -fast. As if from gasoline. 15 years ago I was already extinguished by a fire - the closet caught fire, but then I managed to take my family out into the street, and the fire threw it with snow, and then everything was blazing instantly, I jumped out naked on the street. From the flow of air, the flame flared up even more. And my dog remained at my place - I picked up a freezing chihuashka with frozen paws on the road two years ago, took five operations to her, since then she has been with me everywhere, in China, and in Vladivostok, and in Lake Baikal.
If I woke up two minutes later, I probably would not have gotten out. The cat with a cat burned, all property, of course
I rushed after her, ran on the veranda on all fours, ran into the hall, caught a dog, grabbed the phone and thermal underwear. This is all that I managed to do, and jumped out the window, because the veranda was already burning with might and main, a wall of fire. All this took about 20 seconds. That is, if I woke up two minutes later, I probably would not have gotten out. A cat with a cat burned out, all the property, of course, I had a number of ancient objects there, a son’s medals - he is engaged in freestyle wrestling from the age of five. Money is one hundred thousand in cash. Damages, I think, in total, for a couple of million. It was minus 28 on the street. He put on Calsons, galloped a little, ran to his neighbor, he gave me a jacket, then other neighbors came running, dressed-willy. I won’t walk naked, we have an apartment in the city, but we come here, I was born here, grew up. I also have a camp site here.
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0:00 0:00:21- Your neighbor in an interview with our correspondent said that everyone was sure in the village: your house was set on fire, and they are associated with the cutting of the forest ...
- Yes, this fall we began to chop the forest. We began to protest. Specifically, I participate in protests, because I was born, grew up here, in this borus I went on campaigns, I collected birch juice, strawberries. I can't bear it! This is a relict boron, 30 kilometers to Lake Taurus! File literally 20 meters from the Biya River, and this is a single artery that flows from the lake.
From the words of the police, I realized that they did not want to perceive it as arson and will promote a version of a short circuit
I love my homeland, so I began to fight. And - yes, by 99 percent I am sure that this is arson: in that corner where it blazed, I had no wires, nothing. True, there was an oil heater, but it was turned off. From the words of the police, I realized that they did not want to perceive it as arson and will promote a version of a short circuit. They with pressure today interrogated the person who made me electricity - they say, were there wires? He says there was nothing, the only outlet - in the opposite corner. And firefighters today, by the way, were driving for more than an hour, said that they did not see a single fire so that the person jumped out, but did not even have time to grab the passport. It blazed furiously. And when it dawned, it turned out that I had traces for my bathhouse, to my neighbors in the garden. The neighbors now live in Novosibirsk, and my relative goes every day to drown their house and checks if everything is in order there. And he says that yesterday there were no traces there!
- Why did you so actively protest against deforestation right now? Didn't they cut him before?
- They chopped it. But you know what Russian Ivan is, "my hut with the edge, I know nothing." They began to chop far from us, about 70 km, a hundred from the lake. Nobody rebel there. But when we got to us, our calm village rebelled. I arrived from the city, we gathered the first gathering, came the prosecutor, then organized the second gathering of the village, on it was the head of the district. Then someone burned the trailer at the lumberjacks and shot the dog. The police came up, I and another activist were among the suspects, the whole village on the lie detector interrogated, photographed the soles, and a specific pressure of local activists went. Then we arranged the first protest rally, wrote a letter to Governor Berdnikov, invited him to us, but he did not come, but the police arrived, asked why you were doing this, no need, they say. The head of the district pressed on me-they say, and I would not go somewhere, I got everyone, I excess everyone. Then, one lumberjack burned the sawmill, also there was a lot of police. And today, journalists of the Altai State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company came to us, they were offered to take off my ashes - they say, go, they burned the house from the activist. They say - no, we will not climb into it, you show us the sawmill, which burned out 3 months ago, the trouble is there, the trouble is not here. Apparently, there was no command from above to shoot me.
-And who, in your opinion, set fire to the sawmill and trailer?
- I think this was done by the locals. Everyone fights as they can. Those who are swearing, who threaten, we began to rally, and someone expressed his protest so.
-On Monday, in the embassy managed to achieve something?
- The plenipotentiary listened to us, we showed him an unsubscribing to the police, which says that all the deforestation is legal, there is no forest, but there is shrub vegetation. Not pine, but bushes. They handed him a letter in the name of Putin, under which signatures were collected throughout the Turochak district. They listened to us, said that we have almost "going on" Dagestan, promised to think, help.
He told me: "You burned our house and tractor, shot a dog, we will kill you and burn your homes"
And now the weeks have not passed, my house is burning. Before the New Year, I was repeatedly threatened by ruffles. We call them black lumberjacks. Among them there is, for example, one person, Ingush, in my opinion, a team leader, he told me: "You burned our house and a tractor, shot a dog, we will kill you and burn your homes." I heard about the same threats from other people, Kazandikova Anatoly, Prikhodko Timofey.
- How did lumberjacks end here?
- These are the lands of agricultural, they were bought up for a penny. And now the forestry cannot do anything with them, they tell us that this is private property. Although no one shows us documents. We know this from the words of the police and officials - they say, everything is by law. The new owners of these lands provided some projects that, they say, they would sow wheat and corn. And on the papers of the forest, it seems like it is not here.
How the kite are flying, from Biysk, Barnaul, they come, take the forest and continue to sell - to China, as a rule
But in fact there is, and what: centuries -old pines! And these owners let everyone who wants to do cutting into their sections. They go to the proxies of the owners, pay a certain amount for the hectare and go without a timber, without documents and start to blame. And then they sell the forest to the resellers. Those like kite are flying from Biysk, Barnaul, come, take it and continue to sell it - to China, as a rule. I remember once going to Biysk, in two hours I counted 27 Kamazov with trailers. Each has 27-30 cubic meters. After all, I was also offered when I started to protest. Like, do you need pine? Well, please, next to the village, take 5 thousand cubic meters, Vali. I say, never in my life. Well, then, then they began to fear me. For some reason, I thought that if they start burning, they would start with the car, I have jeeps, but today they passed them and burned my house.
- What do you think could this be an attempt on murder?
- Not sure. Perhaps they did not start touching the car, because they thought that it was insured, and the house was probably not. And there it is already - either to scare, well, but it would burn - also not bad. Probably, they reasoned like that.
- Who exactly belongs to these territories now?
- Nobody shows us documents, as I already said. According to our information, one owner is Mr. Kydatov, deputy El Kurultay of the Altai Republic. And the second is Viktor Mikhailovich Shchekin, he is 70 years old, he came to open hearing to Turochak, we know little about him. But they heard that he had a lot of forests, from Verkh-Biysk to Lake Taurus is the northern side. In the south in the Ulagansky district and in the Chemal district there are many lands. And he creates what he wants. Both the authorities and the police come there, but they can’t do anything, this is a gap in the law. But the lands, for which we are fighting, as it turned out, has two certificates from Rosreestr - one is decorated on the forestry, the other for a private trader. And in theory, the prosecutor’s office, since a controversial question, should impose a ban on cutting forests on these lands, but lumberjacks still come. The prosecutor's office arrives, closes this cutting, they go to another quarter and begin to chop there. While they are grabbed there, they manage to dump 500-1000 cubes.
- In protests against cutting forests in the Siberian regions, residents of China are often mentioned. Why?
- The Chinese are the main buyers of wood. They have a lot of money, they can give an advance, make a big order. What Russian consumers are not capable of. It was the Chinese who inflated the prices for wood. Russians, the owners of the pylors, already actually cannot buy at such prices. But the Chinese mainly take a birch, so it now costs 2400, although it always cost 1000–1200 maximum. In Paspaul, the Choysky district , as I know, the Chinese have already built 12 pylors, a hostel and had to have 300 people there. We also had four, now it seems that one was left. They don’t cut anything with us, they just buy wood. The pine has not yet been bought, I think, precisely because of these scandals, they are afraid for the time being. But I am not struggling against the Chinese. Our people took up arms against them against the backdrop of the cutting of this relict boron. If it weren’t for these deforestation, they would have lived here calmly and bought it slowly, and now the people are angry, and they went with a trailer.
- If you are right and this is really arson that he will change in your intentions and actions?
- We will be angrier. My wife cried first, asked to stop. I say, Natasha, I don’t know how to live differently, I will stop respecting myself. I am such a person. Now the son came from my army, paratrooper. I say, well, son, stop? They will burn the car, they will burn it. He says, no, dad, you have to go forward.
At the disposal of the editorial office of Siberia. Reali, there is an official response of the prosecutor's office of the Altai Republic to the appeal of local residents, dated January 25, 2018. It states that the cabin, carried out under the guise of clearing agricultural land from wood-shrub vegetation, was actually a harvesting of wood, which was conducted with violations of fire and sanitary safety rules. The largest trees representing commodity value were cut down. The document also states that the prosecutor’s office filed a lawsuit against four business entities demanding to stop cutting trees and export wood from the land on which work was carried out. The court granted this request. However, deforestation in the lands of agricultural lens is not a criminal offense and bring to criminal liability of persons performing these actions, "it is not possible."