The environmentalists of Siberia and Karelia have a lot of unpleasant questions about the activities of the timber holding, headed by Vladimir Yevtushenkov. But the oligarch does not lose heart: at the end of last year in the city of Galich, Kostroma region, the Segezha woodworking plant was opened with great fanfare.
The first production facility in Russia for the production of large-format plywood. 500 jobs. The largest investment project in the region in recent years.
For a small town, this is certainly a big event. It is assumed that the plant will produce up to 120 thousand cubic meters of finished products per year – this is almost a 30-kilometer train with plywood. Galich products will go to China, Iran, India, the Republic of Korea…
Galich is a small old town with a rich history, lost among the famous Kostroma forests, fanned by the legend of Ivan Susanin, who, according to legend, led a whole detachment of adversaries into the impenetrable thicket. No wonder the Kostroma region is called the most forested region of Central Russia. It was this factor that prompted PJSC “Segezha Group” to build here an industrial giant for the production of plywood.
Of course, with the state, careful approach to the wealth of the forest region, this plant is the right place. But whether such an approach will be implemented, and whether it will be possible with such an approach to logging, as PJSC Segezha Group, to preserve the forest fund of the Kostroma region is a big question.
Chips fly in Karelia
At least, while the fanfare was thundering in Galich about the opening of a new plywood plant, a little to the north, a serious environmental scandal began to flare up in Karelia. According to the results of monitoring, which was carried out using space observation data, it turned out that in the territory of the planned Maksimyarvi reserve, over the past three months, the Lendersky LPH and Ledmozerskoye LZH enterprises, which are part of Segezha Group PJSC, have cut down about 350 hectares of forest . This statement was made by the public organization SPOK (Northern Environmental Coalition).
For the past 15 years, loggers have voluntarily maintained a moratorium that protected unique forests from logging. However, in the autumn of 2022, the tenant enterprises, currently part of the Segezha Group holding, abandoned the moratorium on deforestation in the reserve.
Segezha Group abandoned previously signed agreements on the conservation of planned specially protected natural areas. At the same time, back in March, the holding declared its commitment to the principles of sustainable forest management, including the preservation of valuable natural areas – Karelian environmentalists are indignant.
Along the Northern Sea Route for yuan
And this, apparently, is just the beginning. It is possible that the “plywood mills” are nothing more than a cover for a much larger project, which is intended by the timber holding of billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov. Namely: mowing forests in unlimited quantities for export to the countries of Southeast Asia. This is more than logical, given that due to sanctions, Yevtushenkov literally flew “like plywood over Paris” with exports to the European market.
At the end of last year, PJSC Segezha Group began collecting applications for a new long-term bond issue. Moreover, the securities are supposed to be sold not for rubles, but for yuan. All payments for coupon payments and redemption of securities will also be made in Chinese currency. So far, Segezha Group is planning to issue bonds totaling one billion yuan (at the exchange rate, this is almost 11 billion rubles).
The interest of the Segezha Group in investors from China is not accidental.
In October 2022, by means of the Russian nuclear-powered lighter carrier Sevmorput, Segezha Group sent cargo from St. Petersburg to China for the first time. The Northern Sea Route, we note, is the shortest sea route between the European part of Russia and the Far East. The distance from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok along it is over 14 thousand km (for comparison, through the Suez Canal – over 22 thousand km). At the same time, almost the entire route runs through the internal waters of Russia, which greatly simplifies many customs and bureaucratic procedures and minimizes spending on them.
We must pay tribute to Vladimir Yevtushenkov, who has been absorbing new assets at an incredible speed in recent years: in 2021, for the first time in its history, Segezha Group outran the long-term industry leader, Ilim Group JSC (OGRN: 5067847380189): 14.5 million cubic meters against 12.3 million. And, apparently, the company is not going to slow down – hence the release of the next batch of securities on the exchange market, focused on Chinese partners.
The Celestial Empire, as you know, is primarily interested in raw materials – they have an abundance of processing industries and workers.
Save the forests from the “orderlies”
Interestingly, in November last year, just at the moment when Segezha Group decides to issue bonds in the amount of 1 billion yuan, it became known that the State Duma received bill No. 161119-8 on amending Art. 11 and 25-1 of the Federal Law “On the protection of Lake Baikal”. Experts believe that if it is adopted, almost 70% of the forests around the planet’s largest lake could be cut down. According to the bill, the so-called sanitary felling will be allowed, the purpose of which is to “improve diseased forests”, but, as practice shows, they are no different from commercial felling of valuable species of wood and sell them. More precisely, they differ in that sanitary felling does not take into account the restrictions that exist for commercial logging. This fact is confirmed by analysis in different regions of the country. Vedomosti wrote about this in November last year.
However, the fact that the law on supposedly sanitary felling has not yet been adopted does not bother the loggers, who are already in full swing with “improving” felling. Thus, the company Boyle LLC (OGRN: 1040302691571) of Vissarion Pruidze leased a forest plot in the Pribaikalsky reserve under the pretext of eliminating the consequences of fires. As a result, in 2017-2019, more than 150 thousand cubic meters of wood were illegally cut down and sold.
And his brother Evgeny Pruidze, who owns BLK CJSC (OGRN: 1020300779641), has developed such activities for the “sanitary felling” of the forest, which is then sent both to the Selenginsky pulp and paper mill for processing and for sale to China, which is a deputy of the People’s Khural of the Republic of Buryatia Igor Bobkov was forced to turn to Vladimir Putin with a request to stop the industrial logging of the Ivolga forests. The results of logging near Lake Baikal will be tragic – the people’s choice is sure. Needless to say, the ultimate beneficiary of CJSC “BLK” is PJSC “Segezha Group”.
Considering the proximity of China and the vastness of the Siberian taiga ocean, Kostroma plywood and Karelian cardboard may look like just a cover for a much larger plan of a company owned by billionaire Yevtushenkov, which could threaten not only the Siberian, but the entire Russian ecosystem with catastrophic consequences.
Our Version is planning a series of materials about the activities of the Segezha Group, the country’s largest timber harvesting and processing company. In the following publications, we will talk in more detail about how this timber industry giant appeared on the Russian market, spreading its tentacles all over Russia, what figures stand behind it, how they “build” relationships with regional leaders, and what interests they pursue.
