Society's struggle against developers who are destroying the eco-park on Osokorki

How activists are fighting to preserve the Osokorki ecopark and what is known about the recent fire on its territory

Ecopark “Osokorki” is a natural area on the left bank of Kyiv, located near the densely built-up residential areas of Osokorki, Poznyaki and Kharkovsky.

The ecopark includes lakes Nebrezh, Martyshev and Tyagle, as well as canals and groves around them, flowering floodplain meadows and the remains of landscape complexes of the left bank floodplain of the Dnieper River, which were preserved in almost pristine condition within Kyiv only in Osokorki. This area is a unique natural home for many representatives of flora and fauna, some of which are listed in the Red Book of Ukraine.

For almost ten years, local residents, united first in an initiative group and then in the public organization “Ecopark Osokorki,” have been fighting to preserve this natural park and oppose its development. During this time, there have been several attempts to develop the park, litigation to declare the construction illegal, pressure and threats to activists, as well as a recent fire in several areas of floodplain meadows.

Where it all started

The struggle for development-free lakes in southern Osokorki began back in 2005-2006, when local residents demolished the first fence that the developer used to block off access to Lake Nebrezh. The closure of the passage to the lake then caused significant indignation on the part of the local community. The fence was broken and burned, and the developer retreated.

“To begin with, it is worth saying that the land that was transferred to the developer for the construction of residential complexes should not have been leased. However, this still happened in 2005 with the permission of the then mayor of Kyiv, Alexander Omelchenko, in flagrant violation of procedure. And when we pay attention to this, everyone says that those were the times then. Omelchenko single-handedly signed an order to create and prepare a land management project without coordination with the City Council. Subsequently, the statute of limitations passed, and this decision could no longer be appealed,” recalls co-founder and head of the NGO “Ecopark Osokorki” Alexander Pilipenko.

In 2008, the global financial crisis began, which collapsed the real estate market, as a result of which the development of southern Osokorki was postponed indefinitely. However, the developer continued to prepare the ground for future large-scale construction.

And already in 2009, when the city was led by Mikhail Chernovetsky and his “young team”, at three o’clock in the morning, according to the activist, they simply adopted the scandalous “Detailed Territory Plan for the Osokorki District”, which completely contradicted the current General Plan of the city and allowed residential development of the entire environmental territory around Lake Nebrezh, where, according to the General Plan, the construction of a large recreational hydropark complex is provided.

In 2015, as soon as the Kiev City Council’s electronic petition service began operating in Kiev, one of the first to be submitted was electronic petition No. 713 “Landscape natural park instead of development of southern Osokorki” with a demand to stop construction on the lakes of southern Osokorki and create a large regional landscape eco-park in this area - “Osokorki.” The petition received more than 11 thousand votes from citizens in record time.

“The petition became one of our first instruments of influence on local government. After she quickly gained votes, in the spring of 2016 we assembled our first organizational team. There was an expectation that if the petition was successful, the votes were collected, then one or two more times and we would have a park. As it turned out, everything is much more complicated. Commissions, consultations, discussions continued, new people gradually joined us. But in the fall of 2017, the developer, then it was Arcade, began work on the shores of Lake Nebrezh. And it became clear that a petition alone is not enough here, we need to join the fight on the legal plane,” says Alexander Pilipenko.

In 2017, activists of the initiative group created the public organization “Ecopark Osokorki”. Then the organization’s lawyers collected documents and submitted a petition to the prosecutor’s office of the city of Kyiv demanding to stop the illegal development of more than 300 hectares of lakes and meadows within the southern Osokorki.

In parallel, the organization began the process of confirming that the eco-park is a conservation monument and therefore cannot be developed.

There are more than 160 species of rare birds on the territory of the eco-park. In particular, these are the whiskered tit, the fisher's tit, the bluethroat, the golden eagle, the oystercatcher, the short-eared snake eagle, the shepherd's purse, the white-tailed eagle and others. And also such plants as borbash carnation, small bellflower, gorse, yellow sow thistle, alpine clover, British elecampane, etc. grow. They create a small natural oasis in the middle of urban development on the left bank of Kyiv.

“The Ecopark actually consists of a set of land plots, some of which are leased from the Contact-Budservice company, and which previously belonged to the Arkada bank, and now to the Stolitsa Group developer. This territory is a large rectangle with an area of ​​176 hectares. It covers lakes Nebrezh, Tyagle and their coastal strips. Another large area that is part of the park is the Osokorkovsky Meadows landscape reserve of local importance. All these areas have environmental protection status, but a significant part of the eco-park territory, with very valuable recreational conservation and ecological zones, remains leased from the developer. Therefore, the threat of development has not disappeared. And the developer did not abandon his plans,” says Alexander Pilipenko.

According to the activist, the developer plans to build more than 40 high-rise buildings that will completely change the landscape of the territory.

“Behind the sands a full-fledged forest begins, and behind it there are floodplain meadows. If there is construction there, then the entire forest area should be cut down and filled with sand at the same level to the level of the rest of the area. And I would like to note that this territory is a flood zone and therefore construction is impossible here. But, if the developer nevertheless implements this project, he will have to raise the level of the territory by 6-8 meters, according to the construction documentation,” explains Alexander Pilipenko.

In 2018, activists began legal proceedings to appeal the construction permit for the residential complex. They lost in the first instance, but won on appeal, and construction was stopped for a while. And already in cassation - this decision was sent back to the then odious District Administrative Court of Kyiv. After its liquidation, the case moved to the Higher Administrative Court of Kyiv, but for more than two and a half years the case did not reach its turn.

“Our case is stuck. But I will say that, in addition to the cancellation of construction permits near the lakes, we also demand that the decision of the Kyiv City Council to approve the Detailed Territory Plan for the Osokorki district be declared illegal and canceled,” says the activist.

About pressure on activists and intimidation by “titushkas”

According to Alexander Pilipenko, the fight against the development of the eco-park should be divided into two periods: when the former developer “Arcade” was there and the current “Capital Group”.

“During the Arcade, when in 2018 there were active clashes on the sands between activists and those who allegedly represented the developer, we had threats from the so-called titushki. It was 2018-2019,” says the activist.

On the Internet you can find news from July 2018, which talks about a clash between activists on the one hand and unknown masked armed people and the police on the other. Then the police began to disperse the protesters and used gas canisters in the clashes. Two activists were detained.

At the end of September, activists again protested in front of the construction site and tried to tear down the fence around the construction. Meanwhile, “guards” of athletic appearance and wearing masks were waiting for them behind the fence. When the police approached, the so-called titushki began throwing firecrackers at them. Then law enforcement officers detained approximately 40 young people and seized boxes of Molotov cocktails, pyrotechnics, bladed weapons and firearms.

In November of the same 2018, the tax police came to Alexander Pilipenko’s home and, according to the activist, conducted a search with gross violations and threatened to take away the car. Tax officials accused Alexander of tax evasion. He associated these investigative actions with his organization’s struggle against the development of lakes.

There were no active days in 2019, and the fight moved into courtrooms.

“Then Arcade closed and a new developer came - Stolitsa Group. And I wouldn’t say that after that there were any threats against us,” noted Alexander Pilipenko.

Fire in the Osokorki ecopark

On March 5 this year, a fire occurred in several areas of the eco-park. Wet meadows and reed floodplains were burning. Activists are convinced that the fire was the result of arson. After all, in their opinion, given the weather and different locations of the fire, it could not have been spontaneous combustion.

“As for who set the eco-park on fire, we didn’t catch anyone by the hand. Therefore, all this can only be guesswork. Is this fire beneficial for the developer? Yes, it's profitable. Was there a fire in his areas? Yes, in two of its sections. Without a quadcopter, it is impossible to assess the scale of the tragedy, because the area is flooded with water,” says the activist.

In his opinion, the vegetation in those areas will more or less quickly recover, but in terms of habitat for waterfowl and all other living creatures that lived there, the area has been largely destroyed.

“The day after the fire, we were at the police, we wrote statements with two other activists, and law enforcement officers began to investigate the arson, because there could be no other options,” added Alexander Pilipenko.

As Kiev City Council deputy Ksenia Semenova wrote on her Facebook page, the fire raged at two sites of the natural reserve fund of Kyiv - in the local landscape reserves “Lake Tyagle” and “Osokorkovsky Meadows”.

The Capital Group company published a statement on its website that it was unpleasantly surprised by the incident and offered help to the rescuers. The company also called on the media “not to become participants in a targeted information attack” on the construction company, which was allegedly “launched by individuals and organizations.”

“Stolitsa Group reserves the right to defend its business reputation in court. Separately, we ask law enforcement officers to find out the motives of the “sources” who spread manipulative and false statements about our company,” the message said.

At the same time, the Kiev police are investigating the fire in the eco-park as a deliberate arson, because criminal proceedings have been launched under Part 2 of Article 252 of the Criminal Code (“Deliberate destruction or damage to territories taken under state protection and objects of natural reserves”).

A few days after the fire, activists of the organization, together with the Department of Environmental Protection and Adaptation to Climate Change of the Kyiv City State Administration, “Kievzelenstroy”, the Department of Green Spaces of the Darnitsky District, a representative of the Grishko Botanical Garden and other officials came to the burning sites.

“Our key question was: what can we do to minimize the consequences of the fire. In truth, no matter how it sounds, you don’t need to do anything special - you just need to give nature a little peace. The main help from nature is rainy weather,” says Alexander Pilipenko.

However, activists also managed to raise other issues important to the organization. In particular, this is the drawing out in nature of the boundaries of the Osokorkovsky Meadows and Lake Tyagle reserves, because now these are areas of the territory that are not on the cadastral map and therefore it is impossible to say where the reserves begin and where they end; as well as the issue of eliminating spontaneous landfills in the adjacent territories of the eco-park from Kollektornaya and Revutskogo streets.