Environmental Protests have Come to Moscow and are Being Exploited by Radical Communists and Foreign Enemies, Political Analyst Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 21 – In 2022, Nikolay Patrushev, then and now one of Putin’s closest aides, said that radicals and foreigners would seek to destabilize Russia by exploiting the natural tendency of people to react negatively to any economic development that threatens the economy (tass.ru/politika/15916147), Aleksey Mukhin says.

    Then, that seemed a warning about a distant possibility, the head of the Moscow Center for Political Information; but in the intervening period, environmental activism has grown – and what is most worrisome is that it has become to Moscow and its suburbs where economic development is taking place rapidly (ng.ru/vision/2025-04-21/100_154321042025.html).

    And so Patrushev’s warning is ever more timely, a trend Putin has acted on with his creation of a new foundation intended to prevent activists from becoming politicized and used by others (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/environmental-activism-often-seedbed-of.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/03/fearing-environmental-protests-are.html).

    In an article for Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Mukhin notes that environmental protests have taken place across Russia but that the situation in Moscow is especially “fertile” for the rise of such actions and especially their use by opposition political groups and worse the foreign enemies of Russia.

    The reason greater Moscow is such a seedbed, he suggests, is because it is so rapidly growing economically, a trend that “inevitably” involved changes in the landscape and “may in an entirely natural way provoke a negative reaction.” That isn’t a problem as long as it doesn’t go beyond the immediate issue.

    “But as soon as this reaction does go beyond a local discussion and begins to attract the attention of political actors, the situation changes; and the scenario unfold quickly and according to the familiar patterns” Patrushev warned about and that Putin has taken steps to prevent taking place.

    At present, this is happening in two regions of Moscow oblast, the village of Danilovo in the Domedovsk district and the settlement of Lesnaya in the Pushkin district. There development has sparked environmental protests, and in both outsiders, in this case, KPRF radicals, have moved in to use these actions to advance the party’s call for a lifting of restrictions on protests.

    Unfortunately and a cause for worry, these activists have not limited their moves to that. Instead, they have used purported statements by veterans of the fighting in Ukraine against the developments which sparked the environmental protests in the first place, raising the risk that Ukrainian intelligence may also be involved or could be.

    There should be “no doubt,” Mukhin concludes, that Ukrainian intelligence operatives “who spend a great deal of effort to recruit Russians and provoke them into committing arson and other terrorist acts, simply dream of capturing [environmental] protest ad even more of taking control of their organizations.”

    “If that were to happen,” the Moscow political scientist warns, “the size of the threat could become much more dangerous.”