Lesnoy without the forest: migrants and warehouses instead of nature in the Moscow region

The fight for nature is happening everywhere, but unfortunately, there are very few people today who are ready to take action. And a disconnected society, in a fragmented state, is trying to protect nature apart from one another! I believe that the main problem is that people only start to fight when trouble comes to them. If the issue affects them personally, if the forest is cut down or animals are destroyed right under their windows, then in despair, people will take to the streets and fight!

This needs to be changed. We are simply OBLIGATED to help everyone and combine our efforts.

Recently, we received an appeal from our supporters in the Moscow region. Right now, people are being deprived of the last piece of living nature — a small forest that they have left at all.

I will not publish the letter from the local residents — it is large. The situation is just as dire as in many other regions, where people are trying just as desperately to stop the destruction of the forest right within city limits and other populated areas.

Let’s help!

Here’s the situation.

Next to the village of Lesnoy in the Pushkinsky district of the Moscow region, there is a forested area of about 350 hectares. Previously, there was a communications facility called “Radio Center No. 1” on this territory, which belonged to federal agencies. In the fall of 2022, the federal property was put up for auction — they decided to make some money! As a result of the auction, the plot was sold for 1.13 billion rubles to the company LLC “Project Development.” This was despite the fact that the cadastral value of the plot exceeds 4 billion rubles (according to Rosreestr).

So, the forest that belonged to the government was sold to a private company connected to the major warehouse real estate developer, PNK Group (renamed UIN Group in 2024). Essentially, we see how the government, instead of using 350 hectares of forest as an ecological protection zone and possibly creating a park forest area for local residents, is selling the land to business for immediate profit.

“Just money. Nothing personal.”

It’s the same story everywhere in the country! The privatization of reserves and the last mosaic patches of forested land within settlements. I would emphasize that this is not the sale of a forest plot; it’s the sale of THE LOCAL RESIDENTS’ RIGHT TO ECOLOGICAL SAFETY.

Now, the new landowner plans to build a massive warehouse complex (an industrial park) here. According to the auction, it’s about 1 million square meters (!) of warehouse facilities, although later on, social media mentioned figures up to 3.2 million (!!). All of this requires clearing the entire forest area of 359 hectares.

I think the number 359 hectares might not mean much to the reader, so let me illustrate. 350 hectares is 3,500,000 square meters.

Central Park in New York is only 341 hectares. Just imagine if tomorrow they announced that the entire legendary park in New York would be completely cut down!

Or, for instance, the Luzhniki Park in Moscow (including the entire complex) covers only 800 hectares, meaning that in the village of Lesnoy, they want to destroy an area equal to almost 4.4 Luzhniki Parks.

Can you imagine the scale?

So, instead of a forest, local residents will now have millions of square meters of warehouse space, which will likely become distribution centers for major online retailers, as there were mentions in the media of plans for Ozon, Wildberries, and others.

What else does this mean? Naturally, a huge influx of workers — tens of thousands of migrants from the CIS, who will come to work here. Heavy machinery, endless trucks — all of it will travel back and forth from the warehouses.

Thus, imagine you live in a quiet village called Lesnoy. Everything that remains of the forest is just the village name. The trees will be cut down, massive construction will begin, you’ll have to be cautious just going out for a walk, crime will rise (as is inevitable, you can check the statistics from the Investigative Committee), and there will be loaded trucks everywhere, dirty air, and constant noise.

In December 2021, the Council of Deputies approved the new Master Plan for the Pushkinsky urban district, which included the territory with this forest. That’s when they assigned the plot an industrial zone function, meaning all the local officials are “in cahoots” with business and are willing to change even urban planning documents for it.

Naturally, the news about the DESTRUCTION OF THE ENTIRE LOCAL FOREST shocked the residents of the village. As early as the beginning of 2023, people took to the streets: several hundred people wrote letters everywhere, demanded from anyone they could to stop this madness, but all in vain. And on Sunday, March 26, 2023, for example, about 200 people gathered at the memorial to Soviet soldiers in Lesnoy for a meeting, demanding explanations and the project’s termination.

That had a slight effect: already on the day of the meeting, March 26, 2023, there was a meeting organized between local authorities, the new landowner, and the residents’ initiative group. The head of the district, Maksim Krasnotsvetov, and the relevant officials listened to the complaints. At that time, the administration stated that it had suspended the issuance of permits for logging, and the landowner assured people that they would build logistics routes around the village rather than through it — something like “trucks will drive around you, not straight through, there’s nothing to worry about.”

The meeting gave hope, and for a time, logging stopped. In general, I’ve seen this “delayed action” tactic in my wildlife protection practice for many years! The pattern is always the same: they ease up the tension, wait until society calms down, quietly “pressure” the most active people, then abruptly continue pushing their interests.

Notice, comrades, that we influence problems in waves, even when everything “quiets down” and there is no acute phase. We still regularly refocus our efforts to prevent, say, the passage of legislation, without reducing public attention.

And the main mistake people make is that they usually retreat and quickly “get used to it.” Their tolerance for problems grows! Entire methodologies of social engineering, used worldwide to control society, are built on this. And this is actually a massive weakness!

So then.

People calmed down and went home. And then, at the end of 2024, it became known that the warehouse complex project hadn’t been canceled; on the contrary, it was already moving into the implementation stage. In October 2024, major media outlets confirmed that the company had bought the site and planned to start constructing at least 1 million square meters of warehouses.

Heavy machinery appeared on the territory of the former radio center, and workers began clearing undergrowth and trees. People tried to access the project documentation but, despite all requests, were simply “stonewalled” by every means.

At the beginning of 2025, local residents decided to try once again to raise public awareness: they reached out to higher authorities, journalists, and bloggers. They also recorded a video message to the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Aleksandr Bastrykin.

The culmination of the local residents’ information campaign was a news segment on national TV on April 1, 2025, as part of the program “Beyond the Edge.” The report was titled “Lesnoy without the forest?” On the broadcast, residents of the village of Lesnoy spoke about the barbar