Russia’s environmental resources are being “plundered” and the current government has only made the problem worse, says Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the 81-year-old Nobel Prize winner. In a newspaper column last week, the writer criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for abolishing the country’s environmental protection and forestry agencies and shifting their responsibilities to the extraction-happy Natural Resources Ministry. Enviros are also protesting a plan that came to light last week that would let Japan ship radioactive waste from Europe to Japan through Russia’s northern seas.
