Construction of a heating main continues in the “Teremky” neighborhood of Kyiv. On the night of September 24, all the trees in one part of the park were cut down.
This was told to hromadske by a participant in rallies against tree felling Nataliya Chernyshova.
According to her, about 30 living trees remained in this part of the park: oaks, hornbeams, old pears and apple trees 10-12 meters high. Previously, “Kyivzelenbud” trimmed their crowns, and they began to sprout young branches. She emphasizes that if an alternative route had been laid for the heating network, the trees could have been saved.
"Last night they cut down all the trees. And when the residents went out for a walk in the morning, they approached the park, and saw that not a single tree was left. One of the residents climbed under the fence and saw that there was just a wasteland there. The equipment is working, removing fertile soil from the park. […] The Kyiv City State Administration deceived the people of Kyiv that there would be a park here. Now we are not at all sure that it still has a chance to be restored," Chernyshova noted.
Meanwhile, the Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko says he has asked the police to provide a legal assessment of the events when Municipal Security officers forcibly dispersed protesters in “Teremky”.
Klitschko added that the Department of Municipal Security of the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA) should also conduct an internal audit of the Municipal Security Organization.
In parallel, a number of media outlets and TG channels simultaneously began publishing videos with local residents speaking out against blocking the construction of the heating main.
These posts emphasize that in some apartments in “Teremky” last winter the temperature dropped to 0–4°C and that the new pipeline will provide backup heating for 183 residential buildings, three medical institutions, and 18 schools and kindergartens in case of another failure of TPP-5.
At the same time, the protestersʼ arguments were practically absent in such publications, and local residentsʼ concerns about the cutting down of trees were hardly mentioned. In fact, these resources try to present the protests mainly as an obstacle to the safety of winter heating, rather than as opposition to the chosen route and its impact on the environment.
Babel calculated that in just a day and a half (September 22-23), such publications totaled over 655.2 000 views.
Whatʼs happening at “Teremky”?
On August 8, residents of the “Teremky” neighborhood in Kyiv protested against the mass felling of trees in the forest belt — they did this to lay a backup heating network for the “Teremky-1” and “Teremky-2” residential areas.
The local authorities chose a route through a forest belt to build the highway, and to do this they planned to cut down hundreds of trees, some of which are over a hundred years old. Local residents insisted that the route could be changed and the number of trees that would have to be cut down reduced. According to activists, more than half of the forest belt has already been destroyed during the work.
After protests, work was suspended, and activists and city authorities agreed to look for an alternative route for the heating network.
On September 21, the machinery returned to “Teremky”. Residents again took to the streets to protest, although the local authorities insisted that they did not plan to cut down trees. That day, the police and the Municipal Guard were actively working at the site, whose employees forcibly removed the protesters from the construction site.
The Kyiv City State Administration later stated that the authorities had “optimized” the “Teremky” heating pipeline project to preserve the trees, and that the protests were allegedly threatening the district’s heat supply.
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