Nature will be destroyed because of economic problems.

We cannot sacrifice our children’s future by destroying nature. I fully understand why legislation allowing the exploitation of protected areas is now being rushed through, while forest lands are increasingly being handed over to private interests for logging and recreational trophy hunting. These are chaotic attempts to compensate for economic decline: giving businesses what they have long sought in exchange for additional revenue for the state budget.

According to the latest data published by the Russian Ministry of Finance on July 9, 2026, the country’s expenditures from January through June 2026 — just six months — amounted to 24.353 trillion rubles, while revenues totaled only 18.622 trillion rubles. This means that the net budget deficit reached 5.731 trillion rubles. Previously, the deficit projected for the entire year was only about 3.7 trillion rubles. Thus, in just six months, the deficit had already reached 151.4% of the annual target — 51.4% more than the amount planned for the entire year.

This is an anomaly. And it is a hole that will be filled by any means available. If businesses ask for protected areas to be torn apart, the authorities will look for a way to make it happen.

Let me give you a real example. For a long time, together we fought against a bill that would allow clear-cut logging in protective mountain forests across the country. In 2024, business representatives directly told the authorities that restrictions on developing protected mountain areas were obstructing 260 investment projects with a combined value of more than 300 billion rubles. Then, on April 4, 2025, Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov publicly stated — and I quote:

“We propose lifting restrictions on logging in commercial and protective mountain forests.”

The same applies to all the other initiatives. Unfortunately, against the backdrop of these economic anomalies and the expectation of further decline, every possible means of extracting profit will be pursued. Our natural heritage is in grave danger. As everyone has already understood, this is a direct threat to the existing protected-area system. Naturally, under such conditions and with such a policy direction, there can be no serious discussion of creating TFET zones — our project for Territories of Full Ecological Tranquility.

What frightens me is that all of this is happening amid a planetary crisis, the extinction of wildlife, and the destruction of the last sacred refuges of the natural world. What frightens me is that a world that has completely lost its reason is consuming the little that we still have left. We are no longer merely borrowing from future generations — we are tearing into the living flesh of our children’s very existence.