Muscovites gather at City Hall to submit petitions over environmental and preservation concerns
Dozens of Moscow residents gathered outside the city government’s reception office on Tuesday to submit a petition to local authorities about planning and environmental issues in the city, Novaya Europe’s correspondent reported.
The meeting was scheduled to be held from 5pm to 8pm, although the organisers learned the day before that petitions can only be submitted until 5pm, after which only in-person appointments are accepted. Activists handed out petition forms on the spot for people to sign and drop into the reception office’s mailbox in the neighbouring building.
Parked near the reception building was a National Guard vehicle, along with several National Guardsmen, police officers, and anti-extremism officers. A prison transport van stood on duty at the nearest intersection.
An hour into the gathering, police asked attendees to clear the sidewalk. After that, only a handful of officers remained stationed by the building’s doors.
The gathering brought ordinary residents from across Moscow, as well as environmental activists, building preservationists, and members of the Russian Communist Party and liberal Yabloko party. The event was organised by a coalition of local grassroots groups, including ones dedicated to defending specific parks and opponents of the demolition of historic buildings.
Participants were invited to sign both a joint petition laying out shared demands and separate petitions on individual issues. In the joint petition, activists voiced alarm that in late 2024 nearly all of Moscow’s parks and forests were stripped of their status as Specially Protected Natural Territories (OOPT) and reclassified as Specially Protected Green Territories (OOZT). Unlike OOPT status, OOZT status permits construction.
They also drew attention to the stripping of cultural-heritage status from roughly 1,500 buildings, among them the Elektrozavod industrial complex, two 17th-century towers of the Krutitsy Metochion, the Khitrovka quarter in the Basmanny District and the Dinamo metro station.
The petition also raises other pressing issues facing Moscow, such as the spread of paid parking.
Similar demonstrations have been held in recent years, including a gathering last year in which Muscovites from various activist groups met to submit petitions to the Presidential Administration’s reception office. That time, a line of more than 100 people formed outside the building. Their demands likewise included criticism of the OOPT-to-OOZT conversion, but the authorities responded with boilerplate dismissals, and the decision remained in effect.
“We submitted both general petitions to the Presidential Administration and ones specifically about our issue. As always, we got form-letter responses. We’re continuing to fight it in court and hope we can at least influence how the construction proceeds, so that at least part of the park is left standing,” said a member of the activist group defending Trudovye Rezervy Park.
