Greenpeace and WWF imposed restrictions against Russia
Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have initiated new international restrictions against the development of Russian sports and industry. This was reported by Infox news portal and Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper.
Infox referred to a document testifying to the WWF’s active participation in the anti-Russian campaign with regard to sports. In October last year, the International Olympic Committee in Switzerland received a letter from the head of the WWF, Marco Lambertini. Lambertini asked the president of the committee, Thomas Bach, not to organize international competitions in Sochi. This same request was received by 19 countries over a 10-month period. They all requested that Russia not be allowed to hold international tournaments. Before that, the same anti-Russian appeals were made by the American Olympic athletes who were representing 57 sports.
According to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the Russian branch of Greenpeace plans to ask the EU authorities to expand the sectoral sanctions against the industrial enterprises of the oil, gas and metallurgy sectors that are working in the Arctic.
The Deputy Chairman of the Duma Committee on Transport, Alexander Starovoytov, believes that foreign ecologists have chosen a good time to implement their attacks. “The Olympic Games began, they drank our blood and they wore out our nerves. The Arctic offers a good place to create a certain aura of the resident evil surrounding Russia. Meanwhile, Europe and the US, in comparison to us, will look like angels from heaven”.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoted Starovoytov as saying that Greenpeace has been waging war against Russia for a long time. The newspaper recalled the failed assault on the offshore ice-resistant fixed platform, Prirazlomnaya, which operates on a shelf in the Pechora Sea Attacks on the platform were made by the “'green' more than once”.
Greenpeace and the WWF opposed the Olympic Games in Sochi. Infox reported that these organizations defiantly left the Public Council on preparations for the Olympics stating that “the location for the Olympics in Russia was chosen very badly”.
Russian parliamentarians are however ready to fight back. “Because of the way Greenpeace is behaving in the current situation, I think that the time has come when a dialogue on the subject could be started, and the feasibility of the inclusion of this organization in the list of foreign agents could be considered,” Starovoytov said to Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Infox reiterated the fact that Russia will host the FIFA World Cup in 2018 and that there are already calls to stop this. According to them, ecology has long been an effective weapon in the war of sanctions. Many international environmental organizations operating in Russia are focused on one thing only and that is to stop development at any cost.