In Chernihiv Oblast, a police colonel "crushes" illegal logging, media reports

Near the palace and park complex of the Galagan family in Chernihiv region, private businessmen under the guise of a National Police official are illegally demolishing 50-year-old oaks.

This was reported by the Open Forest portal.

The journalists claim that the felling of healthy trees under the guise of diseased ones is widespread. It is carried out by private entrepreneurs on the territory of the Sribnyanska community in Chernihiv region under the documents of the subsidiary enterprise Sribneraiagrolisgosp. The work has been going on for two months.

We are talking about expensive furniture oaks. According to the portal, their price in Europe can reach €3 thousand per cubic meter. But according to the documents, it is firewood.

The publication gives the following scheme of criminal equipment:

1. The subsidiary company orders documentation for the necessary trees from DSLP "Kyivlisozakhist".
2. They suddenly become "faulty" (i.e. sick) in the process of preparing documentation and are subject to demolition.
3. A private contractor goes to the site and cuts them down.

According to "Open Forest", a similar scheme has been practiced in Chernihiv Oblast for a long time. Journalists cite as an example the recent high-profile scandal in the nearby Varvy community. At that time, acacia trees were cut down in the forest strips according to a similar scheme.

The Sribnian community, on the territory of which the oak trees are being demolished, tried to prevent this, the journalists say. Its residents called a session and sent official appeals to the military-civilian administration and the police with demands to stop the destruction of trees. But there was no response to these appeals.

According to the version of "Open Forest", Mykola Omelchenko, a police colonel, is "crushing" illegal wooden devices.

"Of course, there was no reaction to the appeal, because in this story you can come out on your own!" – confident journalists.

They also said that the residents of the Sribnian community hope that the chief of the Prylyuk police and the head of the GUNP in the Chernihiv region will find out about the "dark" affairs of the colonel and make an appropriate personnel decision thanks to public publicity.

Earlier, EcoPolitic reported on illegal foresters in Khmelnytskyi cut down more than 3 hectares of forest for 6.5 million hryvnias.