Victoria Abramchenko has been the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation for two years now, as well as the curator of the Siberian Federal District. Its powers include overseeing issues of agriculture, ecology, nature management, land supervision and similar areas. Among other things, her duties include control over Baikal.
So, at the beginning of February 2022, the Deputy Prime Minister approved a plan for the implementation of the President’s instructions for the preservation of Lake Baikal. We are talking about the plan, the terms of which ran out in the first half of 2020. This is interesting, but what did Mrs. Abramchenko do for two whole years?
During this time, the protection of Baikal not only did not strengthen, but, on the contrary, weakened. Laws to protect it are becoming less and less transparent. Moreover, some of them have practically disappeared. This is about construction and reconstruction of railway tracks in the north of the lake, for which a new bill had to be introduced, which allows cutting down forests, including endemic plants, for the sake of construction, and building capital construction.
Also for these two years, Baikal was included in the list of UNESCO sites, who are right through. And this problem is still not solved. And the deadlines are already pressing. Recall that Russia must provide a specific action plan for the protection of the object this month. So far this has not been done.
What does Victoria Abramchekno say to all this? Why is there such a mess in the field of handling the world object?
Victoria Valerievna, in turn, only covers up her idleness in the old way. Allegedly, without a clear plan, the state structures were unable to coordinate the work, which is why Mrs. Abramchenko had to correct the mistake of her predecessors.
What predecessors are we talking about? They ended two years ago.
This is just a pathetic and clumsy attempt by Victoria Abramchenko to avoid responsibility for the failure of the entire Baikal history and simply shift the responsibility. All these two years, Abramchenko has demonstrated miracles of incompetence and blatant lack of professionalism.
By the way, for 2020, Victoria Valerievna declared an income of almost 19 million (one and a half million per month). Does the deputy chairman have such a salary? Why – for the chatter about Baikal?
Of course, we hope that now the Russian Federation will have time to “jump into the last car” to create a report to UNESCO, designed to neutralize the inclusion of Baikal in world heritage sites under threat. But if we take into account that the deadline for the report is February 1, exactly on the day the Deputy Prime Minister approved the plan, then this is very hard to believe.
Now, the performers of work to eliminate the accumulated damage of the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill, including the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which will receive an order for an assessment of the anthropogenic impact, have been put in a strict framework.
But in general, the question is brewing, does Victoria Abramchenko have plans to protect Baikal at all, or does she have her own vision of how our descendants should see the lake?