The Specialized Environmental Prosecutor's Office has achieved some results in the investigation into the felling of more than 200 centuries-old oaks in a grove in the Chornobyl reserve.
Officials from the state-owned enterprise Northern Forest, which is part of the State Agency for Exclusion Zone Management, may be involved in the felling, reports Olga Vasilevska-Smaglyuk, a member of the Servant of the People faction, on Facebook.
She said that the deforestation was discovered at the end of 2023. The perpetrators took away high value trees in an unknown direction, leaving only stumps up to 1.5 meters in diameter in the grove. The amount of damage can be estimated at about UAH 50 million.
"Even the most "shameful" leaders of this "kingdom within a kingdom" did not "raise a hand" on this grove. Until those who do not understand the management of this economy at all came, those who are ready to destroy everything in their path for the sake of earning money," Vasylevska-Smaglyuk said.
Nardepka drew attention to the need to review the structure of DAZV, in particular the expediency of the work of numerous enterprises within the Agency that do not perform the functions assigned to them.
"The investigation is ongoing. I hope the culprits will be brought to justice," she added.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that in Zhytomyr region, border guards caught a truck driver who was trying to smuggle 3 tons of tree bark out of the Chornobyl exclusion zone. He planned to sell the bark in Kyiv as a decorative element for landscape design.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, in the Zhytomyr region, the Narodytska community council illegally leased 1437 hectares of land in the Chornobyl exclusion zone, i.e. radioactively contaminated, for growing grain crops.
