SYKTYVKAR A small group of people have gathered in front of the cultural center of their hometown on a rainy, cold morning.
The reason for the gathering is the landfill that the authorities are planning for the town. It worries the residents.
We are in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Northwestern Russian Republic of Komi, and more precisely in the district of Ežva.
The toponymy here comes from komi, which belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages.
Galina Dymova says that he opposes the proposed placement for the landfill.
– My dacha is located on the front line. It is five kilometers from the dacha to the future landfill. I collect cranberries from the swamp, says Dymova.
In Dymova’s opinion, the residents of the district have not been truly consulted about the location of the landfill.
The landfill decision of the city of Syktyvkar may sound like a trivial matter, but it can be considered a measure of the state of Russian civil society.
Dymova scolds the head of the republic Vladimir Ujbaa of eating his words.
– Ujba promised in December that there would not be a landfill next to Ežva, but it was only moved a few kilometers, says Galina Dymova.
It seems that many others have something to say about Ujba, known for his angular appearance. Among other things, he has called environmental activists eco-waste.
Resident of Ežva, journalist Natalija Beshkareva on the other hand, criticizes that officials make decisions on their own without asking the opinion of residents or experts.
– They just poke their finger at the map that this is a pleasant place for us. How it affects people’s health and the well-being of the environment is of little concern to them.
Ežva’s culture house was originally supposed to organize an expression of opinion with signs. However, there was no permission for such a thing from the authorities.
So MP Oleg Mihailov invited the citizens to a meeting of MPs, so that even some kind of discussion could be successful.
Protests are crowded in Russia
Russian authorities banned mass gatherings during the corona pandemic. Then the suppression of the opposition movement accelerated even more when the war against Ukraine began.
The Russian authorities reacted very harshly to the anti-war demonstrations, but some space seems to have been left for protests related to local contentious issues.
Syktyvkar also has quite recent experience of successful protesting, and even then it was about waste.
In July 2018, the locals discovered that a huge landfill for waste imported from Moscow was going to be built next to the Shies station in the nearby Arkhangelsk district.
The plan aroused strong opposition.
Activists and residents saw the project as a threat to the sensitive wilderness nature. It was feared that the pollution from the landfill would spread from the swampy terrain to the rivers of the area and to the Viennese Sea and the Barents Sea.
After two years of persistent and heated protests, the authorities finally abandoned the project.
Under the guise of war, it can be dampened
Now in Syktyvkar, there are signs that the regional authorities are using the atmosphere created by the war in Ukraine to their advantage. They can brand any resistance as unpatriotic.
At the meeting in front of the cultural center, a young man asks why MP Mihailov doesn’t help the people of Donbass and demands that he tell his position about the “military special operation”.
By the people of Donbas, the man is clearly referring to the ethnic Russians living in eastern Ukraine, whom the president Vladimir Putin claiming self-defense with its invasion of Ukraine.
Oleg Mihailov is a representative of the Communist Party and one of the young politicians whose visibility rose during the 2018 landfill protests.
In the last parliamentary elections, Mihailov managed to defeat the candidate of the ruling party United Russia and get into the State Duma.
The Russian Communist Party is known as a party loyal to the Kremlin and old-fashioned in its attitudes, but in Komi the party seems ready to provide a channel of influence for local activists.
The atmosphere at the gathering at the cultural center tightens due to the man’s passing, and MP Mihailov’s supporters close their ranks around him. Muua’s old lady insists on sticking to the theme of the meeting and accuses the men of being a group of traitors.
also got involved in the boiling. On Russian Telegram channels, articles about ‘s film crew’s visit to Komi are circulating and people are wondering about ‘s interest in the local controversial issue.
The Telegram messages say that had given space to the Ukrainian president’s “aggressive statements” and remind that Finland is now a NATO country. Telegram’s KomiLeaks channel asks whether Finns are Finno-Ugric brothers at all.
– In addition to the anti-Russian rhetoric, the state channel [] specializes in promoting liberal values and LGBTQ+ culture, announces another channel (you switch to another service).
One can’t help thinking that the Russians commenting on Telegram channels want to cast Mihailov, who organized the event, in a suspicious light by flashing the NATO country.
The atmosphere has become tense in Syktyvkar anyway. In April, a woman arrived at the regional office of the Communist Party and argued with activists. The woman claimed that her phone was stolen during the fight.
The incident led to home searches and a well-known blogger and activist in Syktyvkar Ilya Bolobani to capture. He is now awaiting trial in pre-trial detention.
Reporter Natalija Beškarova says afterwards that the organizers of the gathering at the cultural center were unequivocally provocateurs who had infiltrated the local protestors.
– These people did not come to talk about waste. It was important for them to draw Oleg Mihailov into the controversial topic of a military special operation, he says.