Discord remains high-pitched on Sochi Olympic construction

The roundtable "Environmental Problems in Construction of Olympic Sites in Sochi - Ways of Settlement" held on January 23 in the most expensive Krasnaya Polyana (Red Glade) "Peak Hotel" had a number of acute issues, according to Suren Gazaryan, a Krasnodar ecologist and a participant of this event from the Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus.

"The unreasonably huge expenses on holding the roundtable and unusually high attention from the authorities," he said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, "is an indication of some more influential forces behind it than the officially announced host - the 'Green Patrol' public organization, which never worked in Northern Caucasus before."

Mr Gazaryan evidences that from the very beginning the organizers asked the journalists who had wished to be present at the sitting "not to worry", and those who still appeared at the event were forced out of the room.

The regional NGOs were not informed by the organizers at all about the forthcoming roundtable, the ecologist explains. The members of his organization managed to get to the sitting only through the help of the Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Social and Ecological Union (ISEU).

The press release issued by the "Green Patrol" runs that allegedly "NGO members made their own analysis of federal and regional regulatory acts and arrive to unanimous conclusion that the buffer zone regime of the Caucasian Reserve admits some sparing recreational activity," the ecologist has stated.

In fact, "there was no unanimous conclusion of the NGOs, and could never be," Mr Gazaryan explained. On the contrary, the presentations have emphasized more than once that no compensatory measures would never completely eliminate the damage caused to the object of World Heritage and populations of rare animal species inhabiting the territory.