The Accounts Chamber of Russia has become the main ally of society in the fight for wildlife protection.

We love our homeland—boundless Russia—and our fight for wildlife is, above all, a fight for this land’s future. Society is already undergoing an immune-system recovery: people are starting to understand ecological problems and are demanding change! Gradually, the necessary immune response is forming—a public demand in which huge numbers of people unanimously strive to solve these issues.

And in fact, you shouldn’t think that nothing is changing inside our state! After years of talking with agency representatives—our allies in nature protection—I see gradual positive shifts. Such changes can’t appear instantly: breaking a protected-area system is easy, but rebuilding it takes a long time, step by step. The same is true of healing the management system itself—inside the state there is a relentless struggle between those who want to build a powerful country and those who see it only as a chance to make money and move it to Cypriot offshore accounts.

You know, it’s like the materials I once published on how Russia’s FSB and the Prosecutor General’s Office tried, several years ago, to protect bears. They stood up for them, reported a critical population decline, and even drafted a Government Resolution to add bears to the Red Data Book.

But the scandal was soon “hushed up,” the security agencies backed off, and the system’s course turned completely the other way—a series of bills expanding the sports-hunting industry, increasing wildlife-harvest quotas, and so on.

That’s exactly what I’m talking about: there is a struggle inside the state system! Some see problems and want to solve them; others see only money and are incapable of seeing anything else.

Slowly and clumsily, the system is changing today. What’s more, the main trigger for these changes is us—you and me—ordinary people who identify pain points “on the ground” and send signals “upward”! Our next task is to ensure that real problems get solved and the management system recovers. In the end we will definitely see a powerful immune response!

Today I want to tell you about a government body that few know about, yet it has already become society’s main ally in the fight for wildlife. This is the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. We actively cooperate with them, monitor their work, and support them with all our might from the public side.

The Accounts Chamber of Russia is the supreme body of external state audit, and its main task is to audit and control the use of federal funds and state property.

Put simply, it checks how efficiently and legally the state’s money is spent, uncovers violations, embezzlement, fraud, and so on—in short, a terror for all officials who diligently “saw off” public funds.

But why is it our key ally in protecting nature? Let me try to explain.

In 2018 a new team headed by Alexei Kudrin came to the Accounts Chamber and immediately emphasized the importance of tackling the country’s strategic problems. For the first time, starting in 2018, environmental issues were raised among the key topics! Interestingly, this happened precisely when the FSB and Prosecutor General’s Office failed to secure bear protection—in that same year.

And so, since 2018, the Accounts Chamber has been shaking up various agencies, conducting inspections, and reporting everything directly to the president. For instance, Kudrin reported the catastrophic destruction of Russia’s forests and the export of timber abroad! This was a huge blow, say, to the Ministry of Natural Resources, which previously thought that controlling the destruction of nature was exclusively their prerogative. But it turned out not to be so, and starting in 2018 manipulating many data became much harder!

Thus the Accounts Chamber became an independent auditor of environmental government programs, and the first contacts with society emerged. That’s exactly what I mentioned above: we identify pain points “on the ground” and send a signal “upward.”

Next, AC auditors received a mandate to check literally everything—from spending on city greening to the effectiveness of laws protecting forests and rivers. The first target of the Accounts Chamber was the forestry sector, where open forest banditry had flourished for a long time—we were then actively conducting expeditions across the country, inspecting forests, fighting against logging. And we said (as I wrote in my book “Notes of the Russian Taiga”) that Russia’s forests were being totally destroyed!

It was the Accounts Chamber that first heard the public and took up the problem. As a result of the first inspections, it was found that about 1.3 million cubic meters of timber are illegally cut in Russia every year, causing 11–12 billion rubles in damage to the state; almost half of all “black” felling fell on Irkutsk Oblast.

The Accounts Chamber of Russia stated directly that the main reason for all problems is a SYSTEMIC MANAGEMENT FAILURE. Auditors pointed to a low level of control: the forest guard does not properly patrol areas; timber accounting is unreliable; information exchange between agencies is absent. Even a direct norm of the Forest Code is not implemented—forest inspectors still lack the right to carry firearms to detain illegal loggers. The Accounts Chamber proposed concrete measures: uniform forest-patrol standards, tougher rules for timber-receiving points, liability for falsifying forest-inventory data. All these recommendations were sent personally to the President of the Russian Federation.

Some significant changes in the forestry sector—at least stricter control—have occurred thanks to the Accounts Chamber.

For many years we reported that forest restoration in the country had turned into solid wrongdoing. On our expeditions we documented completely dead saplings and a total lack of control or any real reforestation work!

Official recognition of the problems was also achieved through cooperation with the Accounts Chamber. A federal project, “Forest Conservation,” was running, and by 2024 the state wanted to ensure 100 % reforestation of both harvested and fire-damaged forests.

The Accounts Chamber auditors conducted their own investigation and found that virtually all reforestation in the country is done for show. According to their report, up to 90 % of all saplings die in the first months after planting! Officials, eager to meet targets and launder as much money as possible, literally buy the cheapest container seedlings and stick them haphazardly into the ground. A box is checked, the paperwork says “elite seedling planted,” and the money goes offshore! On paper everything is restored—reality says otherwise.

It was the Accounts Chamber that publicly stated that without funding for agrotechnical care (watering, pest protection) saplings die en masse, turning all efforts into a waste of money. AC experts stressed that the country’s forest-ranger system has collapsed—there aren’t enough people to look after young stands. If the forest-ranger institute isn’t revived and forestry funding increased, no reforestation goal will be reached.

Moreover, the next step of the Accounts Chamber was to check real information on the state of forests! It turned out that on 84 % of the forest fund area, information had not been updated for more than 10 years. In other words, we have absolutely no idea about the actual condition of Russia’s forests! Officials rely on outdated, completely inadequate numbers from “the past.”

Auditors said that planning competent forest management in the country today is IMPOSSIBLE because the authorities have no idea how much forest is actually cut, how much has burned, and what needs to be restored and protected.

The Accounts Chamber called such a failure of accounting unacceptable and also sent recommendations for an urgent survey of the forestry sector. Critical AC reports spurred the government: after them, funds were allocated to update forest-inventory data, and in 2021 the creation of the Unified State Information System of the Forest Complex began. This is a direct example of how AC-identified facts lead to real management changes.

In parallel, the Accounts Chamber tackled another issue—how gold-mining companies destroy nature and pollute rivers! For years there was absolutely no control over them. People literally screamed about the problems, but officials along the hierarchy diligently ignored them!

After investigations, the Accounts Chamber reported that Rosprirodnadzor cannot oversee the thousands of artels that wash tons of soil, polluting tens of thousands of kilometers of rivers. Only in May–June 2021, environmentalists, using satellites, detected 30 river-pollution cases in Siberia totaling 1 474 km due to placer gold mining! And notably, the Accounts Chamber cooperated publicly with society, using data provided by citizen experts.

Thanks to AC the problem essentially received official status, and at least some changes began! Slowly for now, but changes are happening, although the system actively resists. When we talked about the issue, we were told, “You made it all up”; after AC’s intervention the problem became an official fact.

We also need to mention the waste-management reform. Remember how since 2019 officials trumpeted: “We will eliminate all landfills and achieve 100 % recycling.”

The Accounts Chamber later intervened. Data were provided showing that, despite the reform, virtually nothing has changed: more than 90 % of waste in Russia is still sent to landfills, and only about 7 % is recycled.

In fact, the reform does not work at all—the country continues to drown in garbage. Thousands of landfills, as AC noted, cannot be eliminated in reasonable time. Even the “Clean Country” project, aimed at reclaiming the most dangerous sites, covers only 191 landfills, while at the start of the Ecology national project in 2018 there were 8 323, of which 916 were right inside cities.

The Accounts Chamber had to endure special criticism after stating that the president’s goal of closing all urban landfills is UNACHIEVABLE. The reason is a collapsed management system, and local officials think only of short-term profit.

It is important to emphasize that the Accounts Chamber is the only state body that honestly and directly warned of the looming “garbage collapse” in the country and the ineffectiveness of all measures taken by the authorities!

Then, in 2023, AC analyzed the first years of the reform: nothing officials had promised was actually accomplished! Auditors pointed to embellished reports made to meet targets—responsible agencies simply drew numbers, cleverly manipulating the Ecology-project statistics.

Yes, the situation hasn’t fundamentally changed yet, but AC’s merit lies in removing rose-colored glasses and honestly pointing out problems, especially given how officials report “successes” while actually lying.

AC auditor Sergey Mamedov reported at 2024 parliamentary hearings that just in the last year violations in the environmental sphere amounted to 86.8 billion rubles (compared to 74 billion in 2023).

Studying the work of AC head Alexei Kudrin, I noted his 2019 words that environmental risks have become economic risks—the damage from logging, pollution, landfills is tens of billions of rubles, slowing regional development. This confirms my thesis: artificially created problems will cost the state much more later than addressing them in time. A fire is easier to extinguish at ignition than when millions of hectares of taiga are already burning!

I’m glad the Accounts Chamber’s tone is toughening; the body gets more levers to pressure the bureaucracy. They now openly challenge agencies, demand reports, and publicly speak the most inconvenient truths. I see a strong link forming between AC and the legislative branch, which will undoubtedly increase pressure on officials and gradually solve serious problems.

Let’s sum up.

Today the Accounts Chamber has become society’s main ally in protecting wildlife. It still has few real mechanisms to influence powerful lobbies inside the authorities, but it is already ensuring transparency and helping to highlight problems within the system.

I believe that right now we see a serious struggle of the state’s immune system, fighting severe chronic defects. At first I couldn’t understand how it was possible that the FSB and Prosecutor General’s Office publicly tried to protect bears, demanded they be listed in the Red Data Book, and then everything was swiftly “hushed up” and everyone suddenly fell silent. How could that be?

Now I understand, because I see the depth of the systemic crisis. And it can’t be stopped all at once!

Let’s watch the Accounts Chamber’s work, help it, and establish cooperation. Perhaps in the near future we will see AC transform into a tough body with special powers and immunity from any pressure by any groups in power! Then we will see truly serious reforms for the good of our state, society, and beloved homeland.

© Pavel Pashkov