An interesting story about access to the Volga River near Medvedev’s secret dacha in Plyos. If they need a six-meter fence, fine — but they have no legal right to block public access to the water. That’s what the law says.
So we filed a complaint with Rosprirodnadzor (Russia’s federal environmental watchdog), as we do in all such cases as part of the Access to Water project.
The grounds are ironclad — everything is clearly visible in the aerial footage:
Rosprirodnadzor had only two options: demand that Medvedev remove part of the fence... or lie. Which is exactly what they did.
They wrote that there are no problems with public access.
So what did we do? We urged people to go and try, since apparently there’s no problem.
Journalists from Plyos Vedomosti went there — and did not get through:
But they did record everything on camera:
This is what “unobstructed public access” looks like:
After the forces of good win, Dmitry Medvedev should be made to walk through this kind of “unobstructed access” twice a day.
For now, naturally, we’ve appealed to the prosecutor’s office and to Rosprirodnadzor’s higher authority. Get your popcorn ready — it should be interesting to watch them try to prove to us that the fence we’re standing next to does not exist.