Press Release, 22 December 2025

Photo: Lake Baikal / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Yabloko party Chairman Nikolai Rybakov has received an email from the Russian Ecological Society following his publication of a post criticising the law on logging at Lake Baikal. Rybakov was urged to “refrain from any attempts to use the environmental agenda to organise protest activities capable of leading to social confrontation”.

In his post of 10 December, when the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, approved the law which opens the way to clear-cutting of forests at Lake Baikal, including in the Central Ecological Zone – where strict restrictions previously applied. The dubious bill was approved by the Federation Council less than 24 hours after the State Duma passed it. Rybakov demanded that all the bill’s authors and co-authors be checked for conflict of interest. According to information from Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre, the law’s authors and lobbyists include senators and deputies whose families or associated companies stand to profit from logging and subsequent development.

“Right now is a time when ‘anything is allowed’ – grab what you can, and while you can. If you support the general line, you can do whatever you like after that. So everyone is pursuing their own interests. Some push through a law allowing dogs to be killed, others – the bill allowing forests to be cut down,” Rybakov stated.

It should be noted that the Russian Ecological Society is an organisation linked to the authorities. Its branch in the Irkutsk Region is headed by State Duma MP and United Russia member Alexander Yakubovsky, who has become one of the most active lobbyists for logging at Baikal. As Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre has discovered, his family has interests in wholesale timber sales and construction in the Irkutsk Region: Yakubovsky’s wife Olga owns a construction company previously owned and managed by the MP himself.