Moscow Denies Plans to Swallow Up Kaluga by 2030

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 13 – Moscow officials are denying a report that the city's planning department has released for public discussion five scenarios for extending the borders of the Russian capital in the coming years. The most expansive would include the absorption of Kaluga within Moscow by 2030 (live-press.ru/novosti/chetire-rossiiskih-goroda-voidut-v-sostav-moskvi-k-2030-godu and rbc.ru/society/11/11/2019/5dc941009a7947509a3000a8). .

            Viktor Pozharsky, Moscow city’s chief planner, reportedly had said that “Kaluga in prospect could become one of the best districts if not of Moscow than of New Moscow … The city itself needs serious improvements and this will be possible only via financing ffrom the capital. We would have included Kaluga within Moscow even sooner but the speed of transport did not permit this.”

             “Kalugans will work in Moscow and therefore all the infrastructure must be ready for this.”

            In reporting this before the city's denial, the Region.Expert portal says that this is the kind of project which reflects the “imperial expansion and hyper-centralization”  of  Russia today. The federalism declared in the Russian constitution is no obstacle for Moscow officials: they aren’t even talking about the need for a referendum in Kaluga (region.expert/moscow-expansion/).

            “This unnatural swelling of Moscow inevitably will lead to an intensification of the trash problem” that is already roiling the Russian North and many other regions besides. But in the future, Moscow may by expanding be unintentionally generating its own nemesis, the portal continues.

            That is because “it is completely possible that the struggle for the environment and that for civil self-administration will come together; and in that event, the term ‘Moscow trash’ will acquire a broader meaning than its literal one,” a meaning that will have political and informational connotations as well.