The deputy from LDPR Vasily Zhurko has suggested some amendments to the Olympic law about Sochi. The explanatory note to the bill indicated who exactly is concerned with today’s complicated procedure of passing the land to the Olympiad needs. According to the Ministry of Nature, preparations for the Olympiad could be done faster if the plots, needed for construction of so called “linear objects” (high-voltage lines, communications, transport infrastructure and so forth) were used temporarily without taking it away or buying it out, but with conclusion of servitude agreements, which means permission for “restricted” use of someone else’s plot.  

Actually, similar agreements are already being concluded for Olympiad. The Sochi National Park has signed 18 ones. But as there is no norm for establishing the servitude with the purpose of constructing the “linear objects”, the Ministry of Nature considers it to be necessary making some amendments so that “to eliminate watertightness”. In other words, with the amendments proposed the whole matter can be done quicker and it will affect not only state and municipal lands, but also those belonging to private owners. With those amendments the owners would not be able to refuse temporary use of their property for carrying out, for example, design and survey works. Otherwise, they shall be suited.   

Answering to a question of how many private owners might suffer a loss as an outcome of all this, Vasily Zhurko stated to a Novaya Gazeta correspondent that he had not made such calculations and the main task is that no one “puts the lug on the state”. The deputy is sure that there might have appeared land speculators wishing to earn on the Olympiad and they might have bought up the lands and have been asking exorbitant price for it now. So he had invented how to protect the state against them.