The line of defense of Moscow: historical places are not bombed, but are built up

Incompatible, inherently antagonistic events: festivities in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory, designed to show that we respect history and are proud of the feat of our grandfathers, and the upcoming development of the last landscape monument of the war years - the line of defense of Moscow near Zvenigorod, which will leave no trace from historical events on this earth.

Lyudmila Butuzova

“Here, on December 5, 1941, soldiers of the Red Army for the first time since the beginning of World War II threw back enemy troops and achieved a turning point in the battle for the capital”, - says Yelena Kozhevnikova, local resident, author of the Internet petition “For Preserving a Memorable Place”. - Material evidence of the battle is still literally throughout the territory. Local residents put it in order, made an open-air museum, the remains of soldiers, swam trenches, funnels were preserved there ... Artificially created Patriots parks with polished dugouts are ridiculous. Here the dugout remained from the war, the entire blackened, genuine defensive structure ... People very carefully preserve all this, the city traditionally holds all the most popular military-patriotic events on the Rubezha. But for the sake of developers we are forced to forget the past. Master plans have been adopted, according to which millions of square meters of housing for sale will be built on the battlefields. In these fields the remains of hundreds of soldiers are still not found and not buried ... How is this possible? They were dying for the Fatherland, and not for the current officials and oligarchs to sell their native land.

Not everyone thinks so ... On April 30 of this year, the deputies of the Odintsovo okrug urgently adopted new land use rules, displaying priceless landscapes of Zvenigorod and its environs for development. An extraordinary meeting was held during quarantine, and the documents - a map of the draft PPZ, urban planning regulations of 500 pages - arrived a few hours before the vote, not everyone even managed to scroll through. So, according to deputy Sergei Tenyaev, they act when they want to push through an unpopular law. The draft PPZ, by the way, was on the agenda at number 25, and insignificant “miscellaneous” is usually sent to the end. Under the guise of this insignificant construction zone, including the Frontier of Defense, passing through the Lipkinsky Forest, 7 km from Zvenigorod.

Residents were terrified: all their many years of troubles to provide the forest, where there were bloody battles, the status of a landmark of federal significance, went down the drain. With the adoption of this document, any construction, even on bones, becomes legal. But besides ordinary people, no one gasped. On the contrary, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Main Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Moscow Region received great relief, who had already dodged between the developers licking the tidy forest and the indignant public, but did not dare to give the memorial a status that protects it from building. Even defensive structures and military burials of the Great Patriotic War are not included in the register and do not have protection zones. The capital’s authorities also refused to defend the Frontier of Defense, citing a letter from a member of the Moscow Defense Museum on 02/20/2016 with a cynical wording that “the fighting in the specified area was short, not bloody. This episode is not significant for the defense of Moscow"

On Zvenigorod for the Victory Day two stocks swept one after another. In the city without breaking self-isolation (you can leave the house in case of EXTREME REQUIREMENT, and in this case it is just extreme) they hung up posters reminiscent of the duty to fathers and grandfathers to protect their land from encroachments. The indignation of the anti-people’s PPZ was so great that the townspeople, who were not yet able to go to the rally or picket, threw it in the form of a flash mob “Let's not hand over the City!” "We will not surrender our land".

“I can imagine how our authorities are grinning at people - both Governor Vorobyov and the head of the Odintsovo district, Ivanov, the main lobbyists for the development of Zvenigorod territories,” a civil activist, coordinator of the movement “No construction!” Shared with NI. Elena Ivanova. - They already know better than us that our lands have long been owned by offshore companies and citizens of foreign countries. We have been around for twenty years, since the time of the former governor Gromov, this “gangster” section has been observed. All agricultural enterprises went bankrupt, lands were seized and transferred to several large owners. But what happens under Vorobyov is beyond description - there is a ruthless high-rise building of historical territories. The ink on the new PSZ has not dried out, the public is demanding that they be canceled in court, and the “owners” have already marked out and placed pegs right on the mounds. We walk in a crowd, pull out the markup, write petitions everywhere .... We have a fairly active population. People send thousands of letters and appeals, go to public hearings, monitor changes in laws and urban planning documents, restore cultural heritage objects - they try to do everything to save their beautiful small homeland from destruction.

Meanwhile, plots even from the forest fund are illegally privatized. And somehow it turns out that large owners such as JSC Gorki-2 Agrocomplex or VTB Bank are allowed. Only once, in 2017, after violent protests, zvenigorod residents rescued the Sheremetyevo ponds in Ubory. “They forced the prosecutor's office to seize from the ownership of VTB Bank and transfer to the ownership of the Russian Federation almost 13 hectares with coastal stripes of Serebryanka and the Moskva River”, the activists say.

VTB Bank, although important, but still a stranger to the Moscow Region, therefore, the prosecutor’s office did not allow to swallow too big a piece. But when they’re swallowing “their own people”, then they’ll fly to the prosecutor’s office where big pieces and the fate of unique places must be decided in the courts. They stretch for so long that, for example, the Lipkinsky forest is already not only shattered, but also blessed for development. And it is not a fact that the Moscow Regional Court will put a bullet in this difficult matter, where some consider the Frontier Defense to be a symbol of memory and patriotism, and others - an expensive building asset.

In 2017, in December, at a public hearing, local residents were amazed to learn that the Lipkinsky Forest is privately owned. It turned out that there was a mysterious “sale and purchase” transaction, that is, the Odintsovo administration sold the rights to 34.5 hectares of state forest of the first category to Agrocomplex Gorki 2 at an astronomical price of 66 kopecks per square meter, and the forest already fell into the General Development Plan region as a construction site.

Litigation began in 2018 and continues to this day... The scandal is only intensifying, since it has now turned out that they are trying to withdraw from the State Forest Fund (SFF) only in the Ershov rural settlement, as it turned out not to be 34.5 hectares, but 726 hectares of state forest!

The chronology of events is this.

The first lawsuit No. 4-APG18-21 was initiated by residents of. Lipki and Sinkovo villages. Then, unfortunately, the Mosoblsud court considered that the disputed land (34.5 ha) never belonged to the lands of the Goslesfond, "since the Committee on Municipal Property of the Odintsovo District (which had no right to dispose of the state forest at that time) sold it to the Gorki Agrocomplex - 2, but not as a forest. In the papers, the forest was listed as agricultural land plots (fields), which is why it was sold for a penny and later included in settlements.

The second attempt (case No. A 41 -10616/2019) to defend the forest was made by the already realized Federal Forestry Agency. A lawsuit was filed for the protection of federal property “regarding the imposition of lands of settlements on the lands of the State Forest Fund”. The new owner of the plots - Agrocomplex Gorki-2 - could not provide the court with any (!) Title documents for these lands. But Mosoblsud such a "trifle" did not bother. The court generously decided not to deal with the sections of the State Forest Fund because the "Gorki-2 Agrocomplex" has already included these sections in the boundaries of settlements. The court ignored the history of the matter.

For the third time, the Federal Forestry Agency came to the defense of its forest when not 34.5, but 467 hectares of forest were withdrawn to the General Plan of the Ershov rural settlement for development! The Federal Forestry Agency refused to coordinate this predatory Master Plan, however, the General Plan approved the council of deputies of the Ershov rural settlement of the Odintsovo District.

Rosleskhoz again went to court.

This time, in response to a lawsuit by Rosleskhoz against deputies of the Odintsovo city district and Gorki-2 CJSC on the return of the forest, the Moscow Regional Court ruled that “the State represented by Rosleskhoz, who has filed a lawsuit in court to claim its property, must prove its right to do so property ”, but at the same time the state forest tablets and forest management documents provided by the Federal Forestry Agency, the court refused to accept for consideration.

At the last court hearing No. 3A-76/2020 (No. 3A-661/2019), which spoke in defense of the State Forest Fund of the Federal Forestry Agency, it turned out that now the imposition on the State Forest Fund in the Ershov settlement has not 467, but 726 hectares of forest land, which the same owner, JSC “Agrocomplex Gorki 2”, brought out for development.

What kind of merry-go-round that the court turns in the opposite direction from the state? And who in the Moscow region is so generous that every year he feeds two or three hundred hectares of forest to the private agricultural complex?

“And here is the most interesting”, - says Yelena Ivanova. - At the time of deforestation, the Forestry Committee of the Moscow Region was headed by Ivan Vasilievich Sovetnikov. He signed the forest amnesty adopted by the governor throughout the Moscow region. . (editorial note: - “Forest Amnesty” was supposedly created so that people whose capital buildings have long been on the lands of the forest fund can register their property. However, in fact, “Forest Amnesty” has become a powerful lever for withdrawing for the development of pristine relict forests of the Moscow region, included in the green belt of Moscow).

- Ivan. Advisers became the manager of, among other things, these disputed 726 hectares of relict forest, Ivanova continues. In addition to this, in violation of the law, he signed an agreement on the lease of hundreds of more hectares in specially protected natural territories (SPNA), where generally prohibited. For example, in Ershov and Assumption rural settlements, several owners illegally leased most of the Maslovskaya Lesnaya Dacha protected areas (forest between villages. Palitsy and Maslovo) ..

And this, as it turned out, is not the most interesting. A month ago, Ivan Vasilievich changed his profession and went on a promotion: he was the head of the regional forestry committee - he became deputy head of the Federal Forestry Agency. It is clear that the “forest amnesty” adopted by the Forestry Committee of the region, 726 hectares of state forest, is contrary to federal law and can go sideways not only to Sovetnikov, but to everyone who has boiled over it. In short, the new chair smelled of fire, in such a ticklish position it is unlikely to win a court for hectares stolen from the state. But the defenders of Zvenigorod early to rejoice. According to sources surrounded by Sovetnikov, undercover negotiations are underway, lawyers from the new deputy head receive instructions “to jump at least on your head, but“ take 726 hectares of forest through the court and remove it from state ownership ”. It is completely incomprehensible how the Rosselkhoz will behave this time — whether it will stand for the return of the stolen state or “jump on its head” in defense of a worn-out official who has now cut completely different scales - a whole Russia with an unmeasured forest fund.

The Federal Forestry Agency did not answer the questions of Novye Izvestia, citing the expectation of a "fair trial."

The last court session will be held on July 14, at which the fate of not only the Lipkinsky Forest, but the remaining 726 hectares will be finally decided. Zvenigorod is in a wild state of tension, as if there was again the line of defense and it was necessary to save the fatherland. Under a petition on change.org. 15 thousand signatures. Words of support, anger, calls not to give up ... But the petition addressed to the president ends with this conclusion: “If the enemy could now figure out how to take revenge on Russia, he would not bomb these places, but simply build them up”.