A group of long-time environmental activists in Russia who had traveled to help put out fires in Russia’s southwest this past week were threatened, brutally attacked by masked men, arrested, and then declared “foreign agents.”

Today, September 13, the Russian Justice Ministry declared the North Caucasus Environment Watch a “foreign agent,” Meduza.io reported.

The announcement followed a surprise document check on the group made by the Adygey Republic Department of the Justice Ministry. Earlier this month, volunteers from the North Caucasus Environment Watch [Ekologicheskaya vakhta po severnoy kavkaza], along with Greenpeace activists traveled to Krasnodar Territory and Adygey Republic, hoping to help put out brush fires there. According to a feature story in Meduza, they activists began their expedition into the woods September 6, but then suffered a number of threats and incidents until finally September 9, unidentified masked men raided their camp, beat up the members of their team, and destroyed their vehicle. On September 13, they were detained by police.

Mikhail Kreyndlin, a lawyer for Greenpeace, told Meduza (translation by The Interpreter):

“First two men came. They didn’t introduce themselves. They said only that if we didn’t leave, things would go badly for us. Or to be more precise, very badly.”

The intruders did not explain why they believed the environmentalists had to leave the area, but the activists decided to move their camp anyway.

But the next day, they had a visit from some Cossacks who blocked them from leaving the area to go to the fires.

Kreindlin explained that local officials do not believe that smaller fires such as this in reeds and brush should be extinguished. As Russia has no specific service to deal with such fires outside forests and nature preserves, which are the province of the Emergencies Ministry, volunteers are needed to help prevent them from spreading into something worse.

On September 9, the group was attacked more seriously, as the expedition leader, Grigory Kuksin told Meduza:



“These were armed people in masks, with pistols, bats, and knives, they beat our people and damaged our equipment.”