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Protected areas at retail: violations with damage of 3 billion were found in the Sochi National Park
Violations in the amount of more than 3 billion rubles were revealed by the Prosecutor General's Office during an inspection of the Sochi National Park and the Caucasian Reserve, follows from the materials of the department, which were reviewed by Izvestia. For example, commercial infrastructure was being built there, massive tree felling was carried out, and waste was being stored. All this has created risks for dozens of Red Book plant species. In order to reduce the possible negative resonance, the staff of scientists in the national park and reserve was sharply reduced, Izvestia found out. All this has been happening since 2023, when both specially protected natural areas were headed by Sergey Shevelev. Mikhail Kuznetsov, head of the All-Russian Popular Front (ONF), told President Vladimir Putin on December 10 about serious problems in the activities of the Sochi National Park. According to Izvestia's sources, Sergei Shevelev recently took sick leave and flew to Germany.
"Predatory exploitation" of the protected area
In the activities of the Sochi National Park and the Caucasus Nature Reserve named after Shaposhnikov revealed violations with damage of more than 3 billion rubles. This follows from the materials of the audit of the Prosecutor General's Office, which took place from September 15 to September 25, 2025. The documents were reviewed by Izvestia.
Sergey Shevelev, Director of the Caucasian State Nature Reserve named after H.G. Shaposhnikov
In particular, under the leadership of Sergey Shevelev, who simultaneously holds the positions of acting director of the Sochi National Park and director of the Caucasian Nature Reserve, "the administration arbitrarily deprived preschool and school-age children of the right to free access to a specially protected natural area," the document says.
The point is that since 2023, the administration of the national park has charged 270 thousand children a fee for visiting the arboretum "Southern Cultures", the information centers "Guzeripl" and "Laura". And she earned 43 million rubles on it. Moreover, back in 2020, the government issued a decree on free visits to protected areas by children and a number of other privileged categories of citizens.
The issue of serious violations in the work of the Sochi National Park was raised on December 10 at a meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects. Mikhail Kuznetsov, head of the executive committee of the Popular Front, told Russian President Vladimir Putin that, in particular, a "gray zone" is being formed there in the field of admission to the territory of tourist groups.
Alexander Zobnin, chairman of the Sochi Geographical Society, told Izvestia that scientists have always advocated the reasonable development of tourism that would not threaten nature. However, officially approved tourist routes are empty, and instead five—day tours worth 150,000 rubles are being sold on the Internet to the very heart of the reserve - the Dzhuga—Bambak mountain range - with a guarantee to see wild animals and taste trout, which tourists are unlikely to bring with them. As a result, there are a huge number of people in the protected area, he added.
In addition, as follows from the materials of the prosecutor's office, the administration of protected areas does not fight illegal logging in any way. The audit revealed 21 such facts with damage amounting to 1.3 billion rubles. In some cases, illegal logging was carried out by the park structures themselves, the documents say.
Damage to the national park was also caused during the construction of a narrow-gauge railway in the area of the Akhtsu Gorge, a criminal case was opened on this fact. Initially, the damage was estimated at 14.6 million rubles, but during a more thorough inspection it increased to almost 1 billion, as more than 40 species of red book plants grow in the construction area.
Earlier, the prosecutor's office of the Adler district of Sochi found out that the land plots for the construction of this narrow-gauge railway were transferred by the administration of the national park under lease agreements to LLC "Symmetry". In addition to the already built railway, this company planned to create other tourist infrastructure in the protected area for organizing tours with panoramic views of the Akhtsu gorge and the valley of the Mzymta River.
This is despite the fact that since 1988, the Akhtsu gorge has the status of a natural monument. On its slopes, you can see such Red Book endemics as cyclamen Circassian, snowdrop Voronova, long—flowered muscari and one of the rarest plants - the hard-leaved bluebell. Sochi National Park is the only place on the planet where this type of bluebell grows, and construction work could lead to the destruction of rare plants, scientists of the Sochi Geographical Society reported earlier.
View of the Mzymta River and the old highway along the Adler - Krasnaya Polyana route in the area of the Akhtsu gorge
The inspectors paid special attention to the case of causing major damage to a Yew and boxwood grove. Local developers have been storing soil on its territory. As a result, the river flowing here turned out to be dammed. And during the period of heavy rainfall, the grove was flooded. The damage amounted to almost 1 billion rubles, and a criminal case was opened on this fact. The real terms were given to two real estate developer entrepreneurs.
"The inspection showed that the administrations of the Sochi National Park and Nature Reserve are actually conducting predatory exploitation of unique natural objects," the Prosecutor General's Office said in its materials.
When asked by Izvestia whether the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment agrees with the conclusions of the prosecutor's check and whether Sergey Shevelev will be able to continue to lead the protected area, the department recommended contacting the Prosecutor General's Office. Inquiries were also sent to the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the government of the Krasnodar Territory and the Sochi National Park.
As sources in government agencies told Izvestia, Sergey Shevelev currently retains positions in both protected areas, but took sick leave and flew to Germany. At the same time, a submission from the Prosecutor General's Office was sent to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the source said.
Izvestia was unable to contact Sergey Shevelev using his personal mobile number, as his phone was unavailable. His deputy Vladimir Titov, according to a source familiar with the situation, was recently summoned to law enforcement agencies to testify.
Illegal commercial facilities in protected areas
According to the materials of the Prosecutor General's Office, since 2023, an extensive network of commercial enterprises has appeared in the Sochi National Park, whose activities "lead to land degradation, pollution of the territory and violation of the regime of protection of rare species."
For example, the Sochi Arboretum has a car service consisting of seven garages. In spite of the requirements of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, retail outlets were deployed on the territory of recreational areas, and mini-zoos for tourists appeared in the scientific and experimental zone instead of greenhouses and seed storages.
Sergey Shevelev himself organized the construction of two houses worth more than 10 million rubles on the territory of the arboretum "Southern Cultures", according to the materials of the Prosecutor General's Office. Moreover, he received permission for this construction from his common-law wife Marina Shchegolikhina, who heads the arboretum. And in 2024, two individual residential buildings with infrastructure were illegally built on the top of Mount Aishkha, the habitat of many Red Book plants.
Arboretum Park "Southern Cultures"
At the same time, according to a source in government agencies, the infrastructure of the Sochi National Park under Shevelev's leadership, despite billions of dollars in cash receipts from visitors, has fallen into disrepair.
Sochi National Park is one of the largest and most valuable protected areas in Russia. Its area is more than 200 thousand hectares. The territory is home to 95 species of animals and more than 50 species of plants from the Red Book of the Russian Federation. Over the past three years, about 4 million people have visited various parts of the Sochi National Park, and its revenue has amounted to more than 1.3 billion rubles, however, a significant part of the cultural heritage monuments and architectural structures are in poor condition and have not been repaired for more than ten years, according to the materials of the Prosecutor General's Office.
The high tourist load on the lands of the national park, combined with the actual lack of control by the staff, led to vandalism, damage to trees and thickets. About 6 hectares of the arboretum remain abandoned: plants are not being cared for on them, new ones are not being planted. There is a cable car in the national park, and over the past three years, revenue from its operation has amounted to 165 million rubles. But despite this, it is in an unsatisfactory condition. As a result, "annually more than 100 thousand A person uses an object that does not meet safety requirements and poses a significant risk to their life and health," the audit concluded.
The prosecutor's office's materials indicate that the park's management actually turned out to be focused on generating income, rather than preserving the natural heritage, posing a threat to the further destruction of one of the country's key protected areas.
Damage to the scientific potential of the National Park
Another acute problem during Shevelev's leadership was the weakening of the scientific potential of the national park. The administration of the protected area deliberately got rid of its scientific department, as the activities of scientists to protect rare plants and animals prevented them from making money, Anatoly Kudaktin, one of the authors of the idea of creating the Sochi National Park, former chief researcher of the Caucasian Nature Reserve, biologist, Honored Ecologist of Russia, told Izvestia.
— The scientific department has become too independent and inconvenient. Scientists were fundamentally concerned with the transformation of the national park territory and its zoning. Therefore, the management proposed to reform the division and make a branch of the institute subordinate to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment on its basis. Many researchers quit immediately because they realized that nothing would come of it. Some of the employees wrote a statement about their desire to work in this new structure, but it all burst like a soap bubble. And the employees were just fired. It was an organized crackdown on the scientific department of the National Park," Anatoly Kudaktin said.
According to him, the scientific department of the Caucasian Reserve was liquidated in the same way.
For many years, scientists have maintained order and proper zoning in protected areas, fought territorial claims to the park and the violation of biodiversity, protected Red Book plants and animals, which contradicted the wishes of the leadership, the expert noted.
Izvestia was also informed about numerous violations in the national park by the Sochi Geographical Society, with which the protected area has signed an agreement on scientific activities. The organization's speleologists must collect samples of biomaterial in the park's famous caves. However, for the last two years, the administration has been denying them access under various pretexts. Scientists are sure that this is done to hide numerous violations.
— A lot of things have been happening in the national park lately that they wouldn't want to come out. This includes the appearance of invasive pests, which today destroy a large number of green spaces, the feeding of animals that are hunted, the use of sinkholes and pits as landfills where garbage is dumped. Facilities are being built in specially protected natural areas, which are later recognized as illegal. We reveal many facts of violations of the protected areas of objects with signs of cultural heritage, to which temporary roads are being built. Most likely, for the export of business timber or something else. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the appearance of a six—kilometer road inside the forest," said Alexander Zobnin, chairman of the Sochi Geographical Society.
According to a source familiar with the situation, the mass death of chestnuts due to insect pests imported from other regions, as well as the well-being of the oak tree, remain acute problems for the Sochi National Park.
The area of chestnut trees in the territory of the Sochi National Park exceeds 22 thousand hectares, and in the Caucasian Nature Reserve forests with the presence of chestnut cover 13.5 thousand hectares, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment told Izvestia. Due to the uncontrolled import of planting material into the territory of Sochi more than ten years ago, the species suffered because an invasive insect, the chestnut nutcracker, was imported along with the seedlings from abroad. Over the past few years, the pest has spread quite widely, the ministry said.
According to Izvestia, an initiative has emerged among environmentalists to create a special landfill on the territory of the Rosa Khutor resort bordering the national park. The implementation of the idea required the support of the National park as the main organization responsible for the conservation of the species. However, due to the passivity of the management, the plans were never implemented.
Given the great attention the government pays to the development of the protected areas of the Krasnodar Territory, as well as the importance for science of studying valuable forest-forming species, the creation of a landfill for growing chestnuts in the Rosa Khutor resort could have great applied scientific benefits, Alexander Zakondyrin, director of the Federal State Budgetary Institution VNII Ekologiya, told Izvestia.
What threatens the leadership of the Sochi National Park
According to lawyer Maxim Kalinov, based on the results of the audit, the prosecutor's office may apply to the court with an administrative statement in order to recognize the illegal actions or decisions of the park management as illegal. She can also submit documents to the investigative authorities if there are signs of crimes.
— However, for administrative violations, the fines are low, and for criminal violations, they are short, which can legally be made conditional. It is quite possible that with a good lawyer, the proceedings will end well for the culprit," Maxim Kalinov said.
The illegal construction of houses in the park raises questions, but it does not entail criminal liability, but only administrative, the specialist said. Most likely, the buildings will simply be obliged to be liquidated, unless other circumstances are revealed. For illegally polluting natural objects, an attacker can receive several years in prison, but an episode of illegally charging children to enter a park can be qualified as fraud on an especially large scale with a penalty of up to ten years in prison, the lawyer explained.
As a source in government agencies told Izvestia, the inspection of the Sochi National Park may be only the beginning of a lot of work by the control authorities to identify violations in the work of Russian protected areas and protect red Book species. These issues are under special control in the presidential administration, the source said. As early as 2026, the authorities may launch a thorough revision of the shadow schemes of protected areas, introduce measures to strengthen their scientific and tourism potential.
With regard to the Sochi National Park, we can talk, in particular, about the return to its territories that could have been illegally seized. So, at the end of 2024, it became known that the Sochi police had opened a criminal case on the theft of 18.6 hectares of land in Sochi National Park by an organized criminal group. According to investigators, the suspects earned 1 billion rubles on its resale and transferred these funds offshore. In November 2025, the Krasnodar Regional Court upheld the decision to extend the preventive measure to Sochi resident Valery Akopov, accused of fraud with these lands.
In total, since the end of the 90s, more than 11 thousand land plots with a total area of almost 8 thousand hectares, of which about 5.5 thousand, have been withdrawn from the Sochi National Park for various reasons. It's already been built up. About 3 thousand land plots (approximately 2.5 thousand hectares) are not built up and may be of environmental value. As a result of the appeal of the Prosecutor General's Office to the Ministry of Natural Resources, they are currently being audited.
In November 2025, the Unified Scientific Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the All—Russian Research Institute of Ecology announced that the Sochi National Park could be expanded at the expense of 3 thousand land plots: new territories are proposed to be used for scientific research and testing of new methods of combating alien species.
In general, a unique system has been formed in Russia, including more than 12 thousand protected areas of federal, regional and local significance with a total area of about 245 million hectares, which occupies about 13% of the country's territory. An extensive network of specially protected natural areas has enormous scientific and economic potential, allowing Russia to preserve the richness of biodiversity. However, there is already a need to conduct a large—scale audit to see how transparently and carefully they are managed, concluded Izvestia's source in government agencies.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
