The police have so far detained only one of the “fighters” involved in the attack on Maxim Shingarkin. A former State Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party, and now an eco-activist blogger, told about this to subscribers of his YouTube channel.
According to REN TV, the detainee turned out to be a 24-year-old professional boxer, but it was not he who practiced punches on the face of the former deputy. The young man only delivered the performer to the crime scene. The identity of the latter has been established, the police are looking for him. But who can be the customer of the attack?
Shingarkin fears for the life of the detainee: “I have every reason to believe that the customer [нападения] may try to remove him, and I appeal to law enforcement officers: you should be careful with this person, save his life, protect him from destruction by the customer. The fighter against the “garbage mafia” Shingarkin has no doubts that the attack was ordered and is directly related to his activities. He claims that a few days before the incident he noticed that he was being followed.
In the editorial office, we are sure that as soon as a journalist raises tough topics, he always takes a little risk. But it’s harder for singles. Criminals may have the illusion that the problem can be solved by force demand. As if there is no violent author – no problem. This is not true. The civil feat of Mikhail Beketov from Khimkinskaya Pravda, who wrote about the environmental problems of the region, ended in death. But she was not in vain. Khimki landfill closed. And now the topic is on everyone’s lips. The events with Maxim Shingarkin prompted Versiya to pay attention to his investigations. Now even more people will see what someone wanted to hide. And further pressure on the author no longer makes sense.
The business associated with the collection, sorting and recycling of garbage is still considered one of the most non-transparent, especially in the Moscow region. The problem of landfills here is very painful. Once in the Moscow region there were 39 landfills inherited from the Soviet Union. Residents of nearby areas suffered from the smell of landfill gases. The landfills were closed in 2020. The regional government has said it plans to reclaim these areas by 2030. In the coming year alone, more than 11 billion rubles were allocated for these purposes. Instead of landfills, waste processing complexes are being launched, their owners are changing. At first glance, everything looks good, but both residents and environmental activists have complaints about the current landfill owners. This is exactly what Maxim Shingarkin talks about on his YouTube channel, and, according to the former deputy himself, it was for this that on February 5, 2022 he received a displaced fracture of the zygomatic bone, which required surgery.
We decided to study the videos on the channel of Maxim Shingarkin and understand whose interests were affected in them. We go to the channel, we see 2 with a little thousand subscribers and several topics at once that caught our eye. Below is a detailed description of each of them.
Literally a few minutes before the attack, the former deputy was recording a second video about how the “battle of Borodino” was lost. In quotation marks, because this is not about the events of 1812, but about how the Ministry of Culture, according to Shingarkin, suddenly played against environmentalists at hearings in the Supreme Court.
“We, environmentalists, have been fighting this garbage heap for decades and thought that the Ministry of Culture, which initially supported us, would achieve law and order. But no. The ministry, where a girl in a T-shirt with obscene inscriptions works as a minister, this very Ministry did not give a damn about our historical memory, ”Maxim Shingarkin is indignant. Residents of the rural settlement of Bogorodskoye, Mozhaysky district, Moscow region (near the village of Borodino) will have to coexist with a new waste processing complex, the successor to the infamous Khrabrovo landfill. “Governor Vorobyov is dancing to the tune of Andrey Shipelov!” – that’s exactly how, almost by the collusion of the local authorities with the “garbage king”, Maxim Shingarkin explains the current situation. The blogger does not talk much about specific facts, but is extremely emotional.
The territory of the Khrabrovo test site is currently under the control of RT-Invest, a subsidiary of the state corporation Rostec. The plans of the new owners were to bring Khrabrovo to a civilized state by the end of 2020, but complaints from local residents about the neighborhood with garbage, apparently, are still being received.
On January 31, Maxim Shingarkin’s channel posted a video about the Yadrovo training ground near Volokolamsk. The former deputy believes that a corruption scheme has arisen around the object.
Indeed, it is difficult to find a person who would not have heard about the local environmental disaster that occurred there four years ago: a garbage dump collapsed dangerously close to residential buildings. According to the author, “crooks” are responsible for what happened – the owners of landfill sites, ignoring the rules for using such objects. “Waste uncontrolledly placed sooner or later spreads and poisonous landfill gas envelops the city, as happened with Volokolamsk. We remember that Volokolamsk took to the streets, people came out and demanded the right to free breathing. (…) And you remember, there was a popular gathering, and politicians, caricature presidential candidates flew into this news on the Internet – they all wanted to hype, but the local authorities promised to solve problems – it was the most powerful eco-protest, and the authorities promised to fix everything ”, says Maxim Shingarkin. After mass protests, a new landfill appeared near Volokolamsk, although the old one, according to the environmental activist, remained in its original form.
Shingarkin sees another problem in the use of flares to burn landfill gases. The environmental activist claims to have evidence of the illegality and potential danger of such equipment.
“Why are we talking like that? Because we have seen the project, we have documents in our hands, and Volokolamsk activists are talking about it, that those design decisions that ensure the safety of the operation of these very Kogan torches were not implemented. The requirements for filters and condensate were not met, and, in fact, this means that the torches are operating in a mode that is dangerous for the environment. I’m not saying that these torches were not examined, the structures were not put into operation, ”he tells the subscribers of his channel.
Thus, today, near Volokolamsk, there are no longer one, but two garbage heaps – the source of the leachate, which is “cleaned at dubious installations.” In addition, local residents noted a deterioration in the quality of drinking water, which may indicate the ingress of harmful substances from the landfill into underground sources.
In the video, the governor of the Moscow region Andrey Vorobyov, and the vice-governor Yevgeny Khromushin, and the minister of housing and communal services of the Moscow region Anton Velikhovskiy, and the head of the Volokolamsk city district Mikhail Sylka got it.
Maxim Shingarkin claims that eco-activists have already collected a whole dossier of violations of the laws of the Russian Federation during the reclamation of the Yadrovo landfill. “We will sue the state authorities before the European Court of Human Rights if the Russian courts refuse to support the demands of citizens based on the law and the constitution of the Russian Federation. We will inform the officials of the Russian Federation that in the Moscow region the Ministry of Housing and Public Utilities and its minister are actually neglecting their duties as a controlling body,” the beaten activist said.
“Who covers the “dirty business” in the Moscow region?” Maxim Shingarkin asks this question in the video of the same name, and he answers it himself. The author calls what is happening in the Bogorodsky urban district “environmental lawlessness”: in Timokhovo “persons close to the section of the garbage pie share our money with you, which we are forced to pay for garbage.” The ex-deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party immediately clarifies that he does not consider himself or other activists to be non-payers: “Each of us is ready to voluntarily pay the price for those people who deal with our waste, especially if you know that our waste does not turn into big smelly garbage heaps, and even more so, do not turn into dioxin poisonous torches, but turn into secondary materials.
At the same time, he notes that the current tariffs for garbage collection are unfair. Indeed, residents of the Moscow region and some other regions pay for garbage collection not by the number of family members, but by square meters. The larger the footage of housing, the more garbage it allegedly produces. Even if it is a summer house that is idle for most of the year. “In violation of the federal law of the Moscow Region, it is almost impossible to pay upon the fact of waste generation (…) in gardening associations, in some other entities where we have private houses, it is actually forbidden to install containers that calculate the real volume, and where people pay for actually educated volume. (…) we were all taxed with a square meter tax in favor of specifically commercial organizations,” Maxim Shingarkin continues.
As far as one can understand, by a specific commercial organization, he means JSC “Polygon Timokhovo” headed by Konstantin Manegin. By the way, four years ago, the general director of the landfill became a defendant in a criminal case in connection with the activities of this enterprise. However, even now, according to Shingarkin, “dirty in every sense” business continues to exist, with the assistance of the administrative elite of the Moscow region.
After the release of the material and the collective appeal of local residents, it was decided to conduct an inspection at the test site. The eco-blogger on his channel addresses the inspectors directly: “Manegin will show you some equipment that supposedly neutralizes landfill gases. (…) There is no project for the installation of this equipment, naturally there is no state environmental expertise for this equipment. That is, the story that this equipment performs some functions is just a story. In fact, we know that this equipment does not serve any function other than decorative.”
In total, there are 136 videos on Maxim Shingarkin’s channel. The blogger talks about the problems near different landfills, but the names and surnames in many, especially the most recent, materials appear the same – the governor of the Moscow region Andrei Vorobyov and his subordinates. And the garbage trouble, it turns out, is one for the entire region. Enormous sums are allocated from the budget for reclamation, tariffs for garbage collection are increased, but the problem is still not solved. Is it really true that the latest equipment designed to protect residents and the environment is just a props hiding a bottomless hole into which the budget flows? Is it possible that anyone who tries to look behind this screen will receive a series of professional blows to the face and a displaced fracture of the zygomatic bone?
“There are several candidates for attack. Accordingly, we are now working on all of them. These are the people in respect of whom we applied to the Prosecutor General’s Office. People who are being checked by the authorized bodies,” Maxim Shingarkin said immediately after the beating on the street. The editors of “Version” will continue to monitor the development of this story.
