It would seem that European sanctions and a ban on timber exports to the EU should have increased the safety of Russian forests. But sometimes the logic doesn’t work. So in Karelia, after the imposition of sanctions, Segezha Group logger Vladimir Yevtushenkov began clear-cutting of relic Karelian forests near the Finnish border, where they planned to organize the Maksimyarvi reserve. Of the 40,000 hectares of the future reserve, 37,000 are leased from Segezha. And earlier the company observed the moratorium on felling. But something has changed.
Since the end of November, Yevtushenkov has already destroyed 680 hectares of taiga in the planned reserve. The area is 1000 football fields. Also, since last year, lumberjacks have cleared another 140 hectares of reference northern taiga forests, where 72 species of Red Book animals and plants live. The Karelian Ministry of Natural Resources cannot prevent this – the status of the reserve has not been approved, so barbaric logging is legal. Local activists intervened in the matter, and for some time they slowed down the felling, but in March logging resumed.
Previously, European legislation kept the Russian oligarch from destroying Russian forests. Segezha Group has received FSC European environmental certification to operate in the EU. Under the terms, the company had to keep untouched part of the already leased wild forests. But after the summer sanctions on the import of Russian wood and paper, the certificate lost all meaning for Yevtushenkov, as did the imaginary concern for nature protection and compliance with ESG principles. By the way, Segezha president Mikhail Shamolin liked to talk about them when he asked the price of selling his carbon quotas for leased Karelian forests.
Now European laws do not protect the Karelian taiga. And Russian officials even more so. Well, Segezha has other priorities. With a 60% reduction in profits and an increase in debt to 100 billion rubles, Segezha Group is only concerned about one thing. How to quickly master the sites before they were taken as a reserve, and sell to China what they can squeeze out of them.
Cargo is sent via the Northern Sea Route on the Sevmorput nuclear-powered lighter carrier, which carries fish from Kamchatka to Murmansk and St. Petersburg in refrigerated containers. From west to east, the nuclear container ship has still been empty. But in the fall of 2022, he brought “high-quality products from northern coniferous wood produced by the Segezha Pulp and Paper Mill” from the protected Karelian forests to China. Just such breeds grow in the relict forests of Maksimyarvi. Now Shamolin and Yevtushenkov have no one to be ashamed of – Chinese buyers of Segezha craft paper do not care about the state of Karelian forests. Like Yevtushenkov.