Acting head of Komi Vladimir Uyba said that the development of the Chudnoye deposit and the modification of Yugyd Va’s boundaries would be carried out only when residents of the republic supported it. He said this in his daily video address on August 24.
“I want to make my position once and for all on this and other issues affecting the public interest. Any decision will be made only if it is supported by residents of the republic. The development of the Chudnoye deposit and the following modification of the boundaries of the national park are one of the possible directions for the development of Inta. This is the issue being discussed today. But! The final decision will be made only if residents of the republic speak for it,” Vladimir Uyba said.
On August 15, at a meeting with representatives of political parties in the region, the acting head of the Komi Republic allowed modifying the boundaries of the Yugyd Va National Park. According to him, the mining and processing capacities of the Intaugol Enterprise can be used in the development of the Chudnoye gold deposit in the North-East of the national park. "The borders will be shifted, for sure," Uyba said.
Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government Yury Trutnev, who supervises the development of the Arctic territories and the Far East, supported the idea of modifying the boundaries of Yugyd Va for the development of gold deposits as well. At a meeting with Vladimir Uyba on July 11, he called for "unconventional" solutions of employment problems in Vorkuta and Inta — the monotowns of the Komi Republic. The Institute of Economics of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences has already prepared a feasibility study for the development of a land plot at the deposit with inferred gold reserves.
There has been a conflict over the possible resumption of gold mining in Chudnoye, stopped in 1998, since the late 1990s. The authorities of Komi regularly try to withdraw the lands of deposits from Yugyd Va's territory. Local environmental organizations and Greenpeace, with the support of the Prosecutor's office, are opposing it. In December 2009, the Gold Minerals Company got a permit to develop Chudnoye. In the summer of 2020, Greenpeace and pro-Greenpeace activists managed to postpone the consideration of the bill on withdrawal of national park’s lands in the State Duma to the autumn. If this law is adopted, the authorities will have additional opportunities to modify the boundaries of Yugyd Va. You can read the whole story of the fight for the national park here.
Former head of the Federal Bio-Medical Agency Vladimir Uyba became the acting head of the Komi Republic in early April 2020 after the resignation of Sergey Gaplikov who could not cope with an outbreak of coronavirus in republican hospitals. The election of the new head of the Komi Republic is scheduled for September 13, 2020. Viktor Betekhtin (Green Alternative Party), Andrey Nikitin (LDPR), and Sergey Ponomaryov (Communist Party of Social Justice) will be Vladimir Uyba's opponents. The Republican Election Committee did not register Oleg Mikhailov, the candidate from the Communist Party, an active participant of the protests against the construction of a landfill for waste import from Moscow at station Shies.
