Sochi residents demand restoration of resort's green zones

On April 17, some 200 residents of the city-resort Sochi went out to hold their three-hour picket in the Plane-Tree Alley, where over 3000 persons signed-in "in defence of general use green zones against corruption actions of the authorities and businesses."

In the morning on April 11, a new fence appeared in the Plane-Tree Alley in Sochi - instead of the landscape corner created by well-known Sochi designer Venchagov. Then, city dwellers started their round-the-clock watch there.

"We don't go to sleep for a whole week already. We're on duty holding defence," says Evgeni Zakharov, a Sochi native and organizer of the picket. "The militia, public prosecutors and city mayor are inactive; although I've personally invited the mayor by telephone message to today's picket."

"Because of inadequate construction sites," adds Vladimir Ostapuk, Chairman of the Ecological Board, "our city has turned out into a hazardous industrial zone. All the admissible ecological norms on air, water and soil pollution have been broken."

According to Yuri Dzaganiya, leader of the local branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), the picket attracted people of different generations, different political parties, human rights activists and ecologists.

Practically all of them were unanimous in the opinion that "permanent illegal actions cannot but cause, sooner or later, a corresponding protective reaction of residents."

Nobody from Sochi administration appeared at the picket. The telephone hotline of the city Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that no command had arrived from the Mayor to remove the fence in the Plane-Tree Alley, while the mayoralty asserted that no trees would be damaged at construction.