EDITORIAL: Putin’s Secret Xanadu

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Secret Xanadu

Last week the Moscow Times reported that it had discovered an attempt by the Kremlin to build “an illegal resort inside a protected nature reserve on the Black Sea” near the city of Krasnodar. 

It states: 

In Krasnodar’s “Forest Plan” for the next nine years, posted on the region’s official web site, the Office of Presidential Affairs is listed as an “initiator” of a “health and recreation” complex on two plots of the Anapa district forest, which belong to the Bolshoi Utrish nature reserve.  The law forbids construction in protected nature reserves.  The Office of Presidential Affairs denied that it has a project in the area. “We don’t have any projects in the Krasnodar region,” said spokesman Viktor Khrekov. “The forestry published incorrect information.”  Development in the protected reserve first came to light late last year, when the forestry department ordered construction of an illegal road through endangered forest to the Black Sea coast.   Coastal plots were leased to a Moscow-based organization, Dar, to develop “fire safety infrastructure” and carry out forestry duties, according to an agreement between Dar and the forestry department. According to the “Forest Plan,” the same coastal plots will be used by the Office of Presidential Affairs for development of the resort.  Road construction was halted in January and declared illegal by the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, but neither the construction company nor the forestry department has been penalized. Construction equipment is still parked near the site, environment rights activists said. Any large-scale construction on the coast cannot start before the road is finished because currently the pristine coastal areas can only be reached by foot.

The Kremlin certainly can’t claim it doesn’t do this sort of thing.  Last October, Novaya Gazeta reported that “a skiing resort was recently built on Lunnaya Polyana, a picturesque mountain spot in the middle of a World Heritage site, in the Adygea republic in the western Caucasus.”   The MT states:  “Although the site officially holds the status of “scientific center,” not a single scientist is known to do research there, and guards around the ski slopes and lodges of the complex make passing tourists delete photos from their cameras.”

The people of Russia, once again, have allowed their government to run amok.  They have stood by and watched as every check and control on the Kremlin’s power has been obliterated, from the press to opposition parties to local government.  Now, their government — haughtily contemptuous of their interests — is behaving exactly like the Politburo of old, butchering th environment and spending the nation’s income on crazed confrontation with the West while the elite live high on the hog in secret retreats about which the people know nothing.

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