Members of Sochi Branch of Russian Geographic Society speak against closing it

The members of the Sochi Branch of the Russian Geographic Society (RGS) have appealed to Vladimir Putin, Russian Prime Minister and the head of the board of trustees of the Society, asking not to close the Branch. This was reported by Yulia Naberezhnaya, an RGS member.

The members of the Branch write in their letter to Vladimir Putin that on January 18 they received an E-mail message saying that the Governing Council of the RGS made a decision - at its sitting 21.10.2011 - to stop the work of the Sochi City Branch of the RGS as a legal entity.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent has learnt from Andrei Rudomakha, Suren Ghazaryan, Olga Noskovets and Maria Ukhova, the members of the Sochi Branch of the RGS, that they assume that the decision to stop the Branch had been caused either with the land plot near the sea owned by the Branch, or with the members' active position against the damage to nature in the course of Sochi Olympic and non-Olympic construction.

"An attempt to close down an organization with more than half-a-century history, which unites best people of Southern Russia, is unacceptable," said Yulia Naberezhnaya.