In the designation, not incoming organizations and private organizations are publicly stigmatized, but direct control is controlled. Thus, you should regularly submit detailed financial reviews and reports to the government and pass annual exams. The requirements should practically not be fulfilled, so many were forced to surrender.
The entry date is especially painful for the environmental activist. “It was a Chernobyl disaster that struck me and left the environmental activist,” said Slivjak from TAZ. His ancestors came from the Belarusian Gomel, one of the most radioactive areas in Belarus. “Some of them did not survive the consequences of Chernobyl.”
In 1989, Sliwjak, who was still studying in the civil construction department, founded the Ecodefense Ecological Group with a fellow student of Kaliningrad. At the end of the Soviet Union, there was a spirit of optimism. And the group around the drain was irritated by the indifference of those who are responsible in the state, which were not interested in pollution of air, water and soil. Over the next 35 years, a group in which more than ten people have never been active, fought against nuclear energy, behind the best air and climate protection.
Also actively in Germany
From the very beginning, the participants attached great importance to international cooperation. Clivjak visited South Africa several times, where the Russian nuclear company Rosatom wanted to build eight nuclear reactors. And after Ecodefense published parts of previously a secret contract in South Africa, it all ended with the plans of the Russian nuclear economy there.
Ecodefense, the Alliance of the Münsterland campaign against nuclear facilities and the environmental working group in Gronau, was prevented from 2009 to 2011. In Kusbass Kohleerevier Ecodefense, he was able to save the forest and lake before plans to expand the Russian cabbage industry after a long legal dispute. The closure of cellulose and paper works of Kaliningrad, which was still built by the German, which led to the fact that the river is supplied with chemical pollutants, can also be associated with the activities of the group.
The authorities in Russia have always been spikes aside. In 2013, they declared the group the first environmental organization “Foreign Agent”. As a result, there were several charges. Moscow accused the group not to adhere to the rules applicable to “foreign agents.” In 2024, the Russian court was finally banned by the Russian court.
Slivzhak left Russia in early 2022. “I could not be silent in the face of a war against Ukraine. And, since I could not, I would very quickly end up in a Russian prison. ” And so he decided emigration, now he is fighting against the war of Russia against Ukraine from Germany. “From the very beginning of the war, I did everything to make it difficult to sell oil, gas, coal and nuclear reactors or better to say. Because each center in the treasury of Russian corporations goes to the war of Russia against Ukraine, ”explains Slivzhak. In the list of foreign agents, led by the Russian Ministry of Justice, he heads 980.
