Fearing Environmental Protests are a Political Threat, Putin Creates New and Well-Funded Agency to Counter Them

 Paul Goble

    Staunton, Mar. 13 -- Many of the national movements in the former Soviet Union began as environmental protests, and Vladimir Putin clearly fears that something similar  could happen again given the power of such protests in Shiyes and Bashkortostan to mobilize people against the policies of his regime.

    Already in 2022, the Kremlin leader created a small and poorly funded group, Compass, to try to isolate Russian environmentalists from international organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. But that group has not had much success, and Putin has been casting about for an alternative. 

    In February 2024, he announced tat he wanted to form a more effective Russian environmental movement (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73585), and now he has announced one, different in scale, operation and import tan anything he has tried before in this sector, an obvious reflection of his concerns (kedr.media/stories/obuzdat-protestnye-soobshhestva/)).

    Putin has created the Foundation of Ecological and Natural Resource Projects, an agency dominated by Kremlin officials and businessmen -- there is not a single ecologist or activist among them -- and one that will give out grants to give the impression that Moscow cares about ecology but that in fact shows its tilt toward business and exploitation of the natural environment.

    The Kremlin leader says that the government will give the new foundation a billion rubles (10 million US dollars) a year each  now and in the coming two years despite all the budgetary stringency brought on by his war in Ukraine. That is 50 times more each year than Compass was given and will allow the foundation to buy off at least some in the environmental movement.

    Putin clearly hopes that such "carrots" along with "the sticks" of his repressive moves will be sufficient to prevent environmental activism in Russia from continuing to grow and become a political challenge, according to Kedr.Media, a portal which tracks environmental issues. But it suggests that it is unlikely to succeed given how close to home environmental concerns are.