WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE UKRAINE - news journal UPDATE - (en) UK, ACG: [Ukraine] Rebellious neighbourhood of Kharkov: mass disruption of deforestation (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Assembly, an anarchist group in Ukraine, have asked us to post up this

article on our website. ---- For stable and high-quality work on
translations into English and resuming offline activity, even minimal
but regular donations are very important to us. To support Assembly
regularly, you can subscribe to our fundraising or send the selected
amount one-time. Thanks everybody! ---- All over the world, grassroots
activist communities stand in the way of the robbery and devastation of
living space by wild predatory capitalism. Sometimes victoriously,
sometimes not so much. Despite the atmosphere of fatigue and
demoralisation that has covered Ukraine since last year, even in a
front-line city it is possible join this global confrontation. And not
without results!

The problem of illegal sand mining near the Zhykhar (other spellings -
Zhikhar, Zhykhor) neighborhood on the southern outskirts of Kharkov
started back in the 2000s. Sometime in 2008, it was stopped due to
spontaneous rallies of the population and the presence of journalists,
later other gangs started it again. Around 2014, it was stopped for the
same reasons after a year or a year and a half of struggle.

Lake of Osnova, also called the Komsomol quarry, is known for the last
pine forest remaining in this second largest city of Ukraine after it
massively died on Saltovka due to climate warming, and the Grigorovsky
pine forest became practically mixed. This summer began with another
attempt to destroy it. On June 1st, photos of the loggers' work in the
Shcherbachevsky pine forest spread across city social networks.

Like earlier, the forest was being cut down for the sand quarry
development. Some evidence of female residents from the week of June
8th-15th:

"Don't get me wrong, but since there are now many more
friends/acquaintances/relatives living abroad, mainly in Europe, than
before, they know that in such cases (such as price increases for
something and not only this) strikes, rallies, etc. are immediately
called, and people defend their rights, and quite successfully, I'd say.
There, if something doesn't go down well with the people, even some
insignificant trifle by our standards, the government gets it in full
and is forced to take the people into account, whether it wants it or
not, at least some compromise is reached that suits both sides. Just
notice: food prices go up once every 10 years, and that's with a
stretch, utility prices and taxes - almost never, and so on in
everything. And here we're sick of it: if war doesn't kill, then prices
will finish off. I'm not agitating for rallies in any way, but I'd like
to discuss it. Just to clarify, for those who don't see the situation as
a whole and don't understand the consequences: right behind the
furniture factory there will be a slope down (a quarry); there will not
be a single pine or fir tree; the houses on the edge will be near the
cliff, risking sliding down at any moment along with the residents and
all their belongings; everyone who has wells in the yard will say
goodbye to them... That's in short. They are simply cutting down the
forest, will get rich on this and will go away, then we will have to
live with the consequences. It's time to learn not to believe empty
promises, but to turn on the brain and preferably in time, not to wave
our hands afterwards and tell how good it was before and how bad it is now."

"We will be left without a forest and a lake - and the children will
have nowhere else to go for a walk. And the kindergarten and nearby
houses will most likely stick their nose in and collapse. So inaction
will lead to us being left with nothing. All of us must stop this. Not
just a few. If we remain silent, we will be left without a forest. All
this should not remain only in a Telegram channel. The war may end
tomorrow and where will our children go? How will they go to
kindergarten, or will they fall straight from kindergarten into a
quarry. The only place more or less untouched by the war, a place where
you can walk with children, a place where people come from everywhere.
They are going to turn it into a quarry in order to make money. And all
we will have left will be memories of how we walked to kindergarten
along a path through the forest. We must not allow lawlessness to
flourish during war. Because people with money think differently."

"For now, all actions to cut down our forest have been stopped. An
investigation is underway into the acts of foresters. A letter has been
sent to our Mayor. Letters have been sent to the competent authorities
regarding the forest logging uncoordinated with the Community. Our task
is to ensure that nothing is done. We continue to traverse the forest. I
thank everyone for helping to protect our Forest."

The rally on June 9th covered by assembly.org.ua gathered several dozens
of people. As many men from 18 to 60 now try not to go to the streets to
avoid kidnapping and tortures in the enlistment basements, there were
mostly women and children:

Although this forest was artificially planted in the Soviet years as a
plantation for harvesting wood, it has a nature conservation status. The
fight against deforestation for sand mining has flared up in Zhykhar for
the second time since last summer. A year ago, Geosand LLC tried to
seize 19.5 hectares for these purposes, half a kilometer from the
southern outskirts of the neighborhood. Thanks to the Assembly's readers
and other concerned public, the plan was not approved. You can read
about this in Ukrainian or in English. In 2020, another mass protest
prevented gas extraction in the immediate vicinity of the settlement by
the largest Ukrainian capitalist Rinat Akhmetov.

This mining business is associated with a Kharkov deputy from the
presidential party Pavlo Yakymenko, who heads the subcommittee on the
protection and optimal use of mineral resources in the parliamentarian
Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management. As of 2019, he
was the ultimate beneficiary of Kharkivnerudprom LLC. Short before the
war, this enterprise became famous for violent attacks on local
residents opposing sand quarries in eastern suburbs of Kharkov.

Two months ago, Pavlo Yakymenko, of course, voted for the butcher law on
mobilisation. Like all the others elected from this city in 2019. The
land and minerals for respected citizens will not defend themselves from
the aggressor, and these citizens somehow do not want to die for it
personally.

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2024/06/20/rebellious-neighbourhood-of-kharkov-mass-disruption-of-deforestation/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca