Green Peace Is Impossible During War: How Greenpeace Supported Putin

While the political community in the Russian Federation is radicalizing, the environmental community continues to live in a world where single-use plastic items and small regional officials are the main problem.

And it’s not just that.

For Vladimir Putin, it is important that activists feel useful, do important work and remain good people – while he prepares a new wave of repression and purges small organizations. Behind the gigantic shadow of Greenpeace, you can’t see this repression, you can’t see the war, you can’t see anything.

So that Putin is not afraid

The worst thing about Putin’s propaganda is that it is very diverse.

There is the environmentalist Zhora Kavanosyan, who clearly publishes Putin’s propaganda, accusing Ukraine of shelling the Ukrainian nuclear power plant Zaporozhye, which is occupied by Russian troops. But at the same time, he opposes bad regional officials and advocates good environmental policy.

And he publicly says that he is withdrawing from politics to work for nature in Russia.

Then there is Elizaveta Yusupovskaya, who clearly supports the environmental policy of United Russia, Deputy Prime Minister Viktoria Abramchenko and the pro-Kremlin TV station Green Snake, who writes the “truth” about the climate crisis, ignoring the role of Russia and corporations profiting from fossil fuels.

And there is Greenpeace – quite for good and wise.

For some reason, the media and activists who left Russia long ago wrote about the deforestation of Kolomenskoye Park, but Greenpeace Russia did not; and earlier they did not write about the burning of gas, which was not sold to Europe for 10 million dollars a day, about local environmental protests, about the beatings of anti-coal activists; they did not write anything about what happens to the environment in Ukraine on a daily basis. Greenpeace remains silent on the most problematic topics, finding hundreds of excuses for its silence. It is controlled environmentalism and activism beyond politics propaganda. Propaganda is for the huge environmental community in Russia that Vladimir Putin is really afraid of.

Oddly enough, the environmental protests in Russia were more successful than the political ones, they stopped the construction of the Baltic nuclear power plant, defended Shiyes, Shikhan Kushtau and many others. And Putin is afraid that these millions of Greenpeace supporters will become politicized. They learn that war also affects nature.

Special Rescue

“Vladimir Putin”, specially for Greenpeace, invented this eternal struggle of a huge organization for the same parks, for the same bills year after year, so that Greenpeace would successfully report: in the morning one park was saved, five bad laws were annulled, organizing a petition under ten thousand signatures . How good! everything is for people, environmentalists saved something from evil officials – nothing can be changed.

And that’s good for Putin too: meanwhile, he’s quietly destroying entire cities in Ukraine, cutting down forests in Russia, flooding the Arctic with oil, and whatever.

For example, in the 30 years of Greenpeace’s existence in Russia, foresters have been destroyed as an individual; Until 2019, Greenpeace Russia was silent about the climate crisis – I learned about it from Greta Thunberg and the international Greenpeace – and that’s because I was learning English. But most Russians do not know English, but Greenpeace has known it for a long time and trusts its silence. If Greenpeace is silent, it means that nothing is happening.

And while climate and political activists are radicalizing around the world, blocking roads, taking over the infrastructure of major corporations, Greenpeace, the largest environmental organization in Russia, is leading people in the opposite direction.

There is a popular book in Europe Blow up the pipelines, in Russia now it would be very important. There are no instructions on how to blow up gas pipelines, it’s something else, the history of the development of the environmental movement in the world. On the need for radicalization in the fight against the climate crisis.

But Russia again has a special path.

And if yesterday Greenpeace could support activists like me, today it is no longer possible. We’re on different boats now. My family is being deported because I demanded an embargo on fossil fuels, which is the root cause of the current crisis and the current war. And Greenpeace is silent again, its employees continue to receive a salary, go everywhere and pretend to be nature fighters. But they are not: they are part of Putin’s propaganda.

I am criticized, accused of betraying my own nation – but this is not treason, but a discussion that hardly ever happens in our country. It was difficult for me to conduct it, I did not want to, but I opened the discussion – this is necessary for the Russian Federation! We need the radicalization of environmental protests, graffiti, leaflets and green guerrillas.

I have the moral right to write about it. I was in Russia at the protests and publicly spoke about all this. Long before the war and during the war.

Silence is complicity

The strategy of Greenpeace and many Russians who were outside of politics and did not want to say goodbye to a comfortable life allowed the authorities to start this criminal war. (Not only them, of course, but them too.) And I was sure that the international Greenpeace wouldn’t shut down the branch in Russia – but I was sure that the Russian regime would come for them when they sorted out the problems with less loyal NGOs, and then there would be no one who would support Russian Greenpeace, because by then not only I but also hundreds of thousands of other Russians will be disappointed. And now the Russian “Greenpeace” is already an undesirable organization.

Russia wiped out entire cities in Syria – Greenpeace was silent, although then there was no such harsh legislation against human rights defenders as there is now. Russia continues to destroy cities in Ukraine, commit genocide, take over nuclear power plants. And the largest environmental organization is silent again. Silence during genocide is complicity.

Unpaid activists, often without money, and in the meantime looking for housing, wrote about the effects of the war. Silence is a betrayal of the values ​​of the organization itself.

• A green world is impossible when Putin is in power.
• Green cities are impossible while there is a war going on.
• Green energy is not suitable for tank engines and rocket salvos.

You may disagree with me. But I am an activist and I am asking you to think about it: the situation will only get worse. Greenpeace no longer exists, but its area of ​​responsibility remains, and this should be understood by all Russians who have ever supported and believed in the largest environmental organization in Russia.