"Government looks like a landfill." How environmental activists are persecuted in Russia, 05 July 2023

[Summary translation prepared by Business and Human Rights Resource Centre]

Russian authorities are persecuting environmental activists and citizens who defend their right to clean air and water. People are threatened with weapons, beaten, arrested, accused of having links with the West. Since the beginning of the year, 70 people have been attacked, detained and prosecuted...

[M]embers of the Environmental Crisis Group have published an overview about the pressure on environmental activists in Russia. According to them, the number of such cases has increased significantly this year...

The confrontation with the authorities unfolded around issues such as landfills in the Krasnodar and Primorsky Territories and the Leningrad Region, open-pit coal mining in the Kemerovo Region, and the planned development of the Kosinsky natural and historical park in Moscow...

"[E]co-activists challenge not only state interests, but also economic ones, in which Russian officials are often interested. Behind every conflict one can find economic interest - someone always wants to cut down something, dig something. And the state, instead of solving problems, is trying to put pressure on environmental activists in order to shut down this topic. And today we see that the trend continues, the methods are becoming tougher."

Pressure methods can be very different. In February, schoolchildren and their parents organized a protest in St. Petersburg against the high-rise building in the park next to their school. After that, the police came to check the schoolchildren...

In Karelia, official of the administration of the Medvezhyegorsk district - Igor Derevyagin, literally attacked the animal rights activist Irina Porovoznik, who had come to the municipal dog shelter that he runs. A video appeared on social networks in which the official holds the woman by the throat and breathes a cigarette into her face. According to Porovoznik, Derevyagin threw her to the ground and sat on her, hitting her chest with his elbow. The cause of the conflict, according to Porovoznik, were the complaints regarding keeping the animals in the shelter that had been filed by her and other activists...