While the investigative authorities of the Leningrad region are busy returning lands stolen from the state, another land and natural drama is unfolding in the Vsevolozhsk region. Residents of Yucca went on a crusade against the vice-governor Igor Petrov and the newly elected head of the Yukkovsky settlement – Alexandra Leonova. The editors of the online publication Kompromat Group were looking into whether residents’ complaints would have any effect on the governor of the Leningrad region.
Scheme for heaven
There is a lot of work to be done at the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. Residents of the Yukki Village in the Vsevolozhsk region have begun a second “crusade” against the next “compressive development” of elite cottages. As usual, forests and local water recreation areas are being compacted in the Vsevolozhsk region. They seal it off, as usual, from all ordinary residents and tourists.
The Yukkov area is special. For the air, for the forest, for the gentle atmosphere of the lakes, it is called a resort. In 1838, this place, the former Finnish village “Haapkangas” (Haapkangai), was chosen by His Serene Highness Princess Ekaterina Nikolaevna Lopukhina. Here, on the Aspen Grove manor, she had a particularly good rest. During the revolutionary years, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s mother, Maria Aleksandrovna Ulyanova, loved to relax here. Here she died, on July 25, 1916, renting a dacha until her last days.
Yuccas are a tasty morsel of forest land on the lakes. Developers are actively offering future owners heavenly living conditions in new cottage villages. Construction is growing. Many former federal lands end up being leased for recreational purposes, then literally change their category out of the blue, and voila – a new piece is ready for sale. What has been happening here in recent years most often raises questions among security forces and activists.
The other day it became known that local residents entered into a confrontation with law enforcement agencies, who stubbornly do not see the abuses in how the Yukkovsky forests are being turned into construction sites for elite villages. Back in 2021 Mikhail Moskvinnow arrested on corruption charges, approved the construction of the Gardarika ethnopark. But in order to carry out an initiative that was wonderful in many ways, it was necessary to transfer 115.1 hectares of land for industrial development and 41.4 hectares of forest land to the lands of settlements, and this meant changing the general plan of the Yukkovsky rural settlement. Two years ago, it was the master plan that prevented the start of grandiose construction. But today everything has changed. Firstly, Yukkov became the new head Alexander Leonov. Secondly, by a strange coincidence, the name and surname of the investor of the ethnopark are identical to the full name of the new head…
Thirdly, the change in the general plan of the settlement jeopardizes the luxurious coniferous forests, which, after the last changes to the general plan in 2011, began to belong to the village, which was recorded in documents of the Ministry of Regional Development and the Russian Agricultural Agency.
Air of Russian Switzerland
The local population believes that Leonov’s appointment was not accidental, and that “Russian Switzerland,” as Yukki is sometimes called, fell into the hands of the “right person,” which is strategically interesting to the high ranks of the Leningrad region. Local activists understand something about this. After all, they have already been in a fight since 2021, with one former head of the Yukkovsky settlement, now the first vice-governor of the Leningrad region Igor Petrov.
In the initiative public pages dedicated to Yuccas on the social network VKontakte, you can find quite a few publications about how villagers wrote complaints to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Vsevolozhsk region and the governor of the Leningrad region Alexandru Drozdenko. Residents believe that the Yukkovsky forests are under threat of deforestation. They believe that there is a possible theft of real estate and their alienation in favor of Igor Petrov. In particular, the complainants focused on the fact that the scheme for transferring land plots to development companies contained signs of illegality.
For example, activists described an interesting moment. When Petrov worked at RTK CJSC in the early 2000s, he asked for 3.27 acres of land in the village of Yukki for the organization. Then, a list of supposed employees of the company, participants in the fighting in Afghanistan, who by law had the right to be provided with free plots, was submitted to the settlement administration. As soon as the plots were allocated, in 2004, for some reason they all suddenly… sold their plots Igor Petrov. Later, some were sold, 4 plots ended up in some Ekaterina Petrova (a lady who looks like the official’s mother), and another 3 from a certain Lyubov Petrova (again, by coincidence, similar to his ex-wife).
For two years, local residents have been struggling with the lack of understanding of law enforcement agencies, who stubbornly do not see any violations in this story. But the prosecutor’s office of the Leningrad region unexpectedly sided with the activists.
Still waters
Residents have something to fight for, because they, literally, were almost left without access to water. Lake Tokhkolodskoe in Yukki on the Rosreestr map in 2020 suddenly began to look like a blue spot bordered by the territory intended for individual housing construction. Rosreestr has accomplished the impossible by erasing one of the favorite vacation spots of St. Petersburg residents from the map. The land plot with cadastral number 47:07:0479002:1815 actually represents the entire coastline of Lake Tokhkolodskoye, and the plot 47:07:0479002:1089 nearby received the official status of “land” on which the construction of residential buildings is permitted. The documents were signed by the same Igor Petrovwhen he was the head of the Yukkovsky settlement.
Everything would be fine, but today local residents are ready to go to the end. After all, the scheme with plots in Yucca is painfully similar to the scheme described in the criminal case of land theft in the same Vsevolozhsk region. Recently, the Prosecutor General’s Office approved an indictment against the former head of the district administration Alexandra Sabalenko. This is the famous case of the same SNT “Osinki”, about which the all-powerful director of the Investigative Committee of Russia growled in anger Alexander Bastrykin.
Sabalenko was charged with embezzlement on an especially large scale (Part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The ex-head of SNT “Osinki” is also involved in the case. Alexey Ferentsand top managers of the companies “Yurenergoservice” and LLC “Region” – Alexander Smirnov And Anatoly Sturov. Additionally, they are accused of legalizing stolen funds (Part 4 of Article 174 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
As follows from the case materials, Alexander Sabalenkobeing the head of the district, issued resolutions according to which a large plot of land was removed from the jurisdiction of the district administration. Earth like us already wrotewas intended for large families, but suddenly turned out to be registered in the name of relatives and acquaintances of the three defendants. The plots were then divided into smaller plots and sold at market prices.
The scheme is very old and, apparently, still works. In 2012, there was already a similar scandal. The head of the Lomonosov district came under criminal prosecution Evgeny UstinovUstinov’s deputy Evgeny Chernyaevhead of the village of Lebyazhye Yuri Zakharchuk and a couple of dashing realtors. Here, too, as in Yucca, plots were allocated for special categories of citizens. Only instead of Afghan soldiers, in that case, disabled people acted. As the investigation established, the criminal group registered land in the recreational area of the Gulf of Finland for disabled people, and later sold it to that same couple of crooked realtors for three rubles. Then the plots of the “delicious” land ended up on the real estate market at market prices.
Will the investigation of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where the residents of the settlement went to complain, be closely involved in the Yukki story? It is unknown yet. It is possible that another outbreak will be needed to save lakes and forests menacing anger Alexandra Bastrykina.
