UN ecologists call on Russia to revise location of Sochi Olympiad sites

The UNEP - United Nations Environment Programme - has supported the appeals of the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace of Russia to remove the sledge and bobsleigh complex and the Olympic Village to be erected for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics from the Grushevoy Ridge to some alternative locations.

"The UNEP offers the Russian organizers and the International Olympic Committee to urgently consider possibilities of alternative placement of the above sites," Russian ecologists have informed.

The leading ecologists of Russia have called on the Sochi-2014 Organizing Committee and the "Olympstroy" State Corporation to start actual consideration of alternative locations of Olympic objects together with independent international experts, the RIA "Novosti" reports.

Ecologists are also still trying to challenge the legality of the highway now built to the Moon Meadow in Adygea, where contrary to the law a mountain ski complex was built, and new zoning of the Sochi National Park, where Olympic objects are now erected.

However, the Russian Ministry for Environment Protection ("Minprirody") asserts that the appeals of the UNEP were misinterpreted, and it has no intention to relocate any Olympic objects to Sochi, despite ecologists' demands.