At the beginning of March, the expert and analytical platform Infragreen published its annual report “ESG, decarbonization and green finance in Russia 2022”. He published a chart of the “Russian ecological platform” with the dirtiest-looking main cities. Veliky Novgorod unexpectedly occupied the third row, the first two places were taken by Minusinsk and Abakan.
On Monday, April 3, RIA Novosti wrote about the rating, giving it wide publicity. A number of publications – including “The Eastern Herald in Veliky Novgorod” – covered this news in their materials. Sergei Shakhmatov, the director of the Russian Ecological Platform, reportedly described the low air quality results in Veliky Novgorod as abnormal, according to him, environmentalists do not yet have an explanation for the data.
Two days later, Alexander Yurchenko, Minister of Natural Resources, Forestry and Ecology of the Novgorod region, commented on regional television channels on the entry of Veliky Novgorod into the top three anti-environmental leaders. He said that in 2022, 25,000 air samples were taken, none of them recorded an exceedance of the maximum allowed concentration.
Yurchenko added that Rosprirodnadzor presented its ranking of cities with the dirtiest air this week, Veliky Novgorod was not included in it.
The words of the head of the regional Ministry of Natural Resources did not convince all residents of the city. In the comments under one of the publications of the VKontakte group “Blacklist of Veliky Novgorod”, users indicated places with poor air quality where samples should be taken.
“The Ministry of Natural Resources does not take samples there! He should try the air more often at Mondelez (Mondelez – ed.) on Moskovskaya Street! ”, – wrote a resident of the city.
Another Novgorodian said that on April 6 he stood with a friend near the sewer near the Istok gymnasium and it was uncomfortable for them to breathe.
“The eyes did not hurt, but they coughed often. If they had taken samples there, everything would have been off scale,” the user explained.
