The scale of the Sibai disaster has drawn the attention of one of Russia’s leading opposition politicians, Alexei Navalny, who has sharply criticized the behavior of local authorities in this situation. However, it should be noted that not only the authorities are responsible for the disaster in Sibai, but also its main culprit — the Uchalinsky Mining and Metallurgical Combine, which is owned by the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UGMK), headed by the Bukharian Jew Iskander Mahmudov. There is no need to talk about the attitude of this and other similar enterprises towards the environment and the local population — it is determined by the authorities and does not differ whether in Bashkortostan or in other parts of the nominal Russian Federation. But what is different, especially in the case of UGMK, is its attitude to the spiritual values of the land on which it operates and the population it kills.
Sibai is the land of the Bashkir Muslim people, from whose exploitation the UGMK earns billions. At the same time, the religion of this people brings them the same benefits as the environment and health — zero, or rather negative. However, the situation is different when it comes to UGMK’s attitude towards the Orthodox Church. According to open sources, the UGMK, which earns its money, among other things, by extracting resources from Muslim lands and peoples, has a large-scale program for the construction and restoration of Orthodox churches. As part of this program, new temples have been built:
- Monastery in honor of the Holy Royal Martyrs in the Ganina Yama district (Sverdlovsk region).
- The Church dedicated to the Holy and Righteous Prince Alexander Nevsky (Sverdlovsk Region, Verkhnyaya Pyshma, Balatym village).
- The Church of the Name of the Holy and Righteous Prince Alexander Nevsky (Sverdlovsk region, Verkhnyaya Pyshma).
- The Church dedicated to St. Ambrose of Optina (Sverdlovsk region, Kirovgrad).
- The Church of St. Michael the Archpriest (Revda, Sverdlovsk region).
- The Church of the Holy Icon of the Mother of God «Seeking the Perished» (Sverdlovsk region, Kachkanar).
- The Church dedicated to St. Andrew of Crete (Sverdlovsk Region, Harenki District).
- The Church of St. John the Just of Kronstadt and St. Sergius of Radonezh (Krasnoyarsk, Sverdlovsk region).
- The Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia (Orenburg region, Mednogorsk).
- The Church of St. John the Just of Kronstadt (Orenburg region, Gay).
- The Church of St. Michael the Archangel (Tomsk region, Turuntaevo village).
- The Church of St. Justice Prince Alexander Nevsky (Sakhalin Island, Troitskoe village).
- The Church of St. Procopius the Just (Kemerovo region, Novokuznetsk district, Nedorezovo village).
- The Church of the Protection of the Holy Theotokos (Tambov region, Mukhkap village).
- The Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God (Moscow).
- The Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos «Znamenie» (Kurgan region, Shadrinsk district, Maslyanskoe village).
- The Church of the Holy and Righteous Prince Alexander Nevsky (Kaliningrad region, Baltiysk).
The following churches were rebuilt:
- The Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos (Sverdlovsk region, Verkhnyaya Pyshma).
- The Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord (Serov, Sverdlovsk region).
- The Church of the Icon of the Mother of God «Feodorovskaya» (Nizhny Novgorod region, Gorodets).
- Cathedral bell tower «Bolshoy Zlatoust» (Ekaterinburg) — in cooperation with the Russian Copper Company.
- The Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel (Sverdlovsk region, Verkhotursky district, Merkushino village) — in cooperation with the Russian Copper Company.
Participation in reconstruction and restoration of the following objects:
- The Church of the Holy and Righteous Prince Alexander Nevsky in the Novo-Tikhvin Convent (Ekaterinburg).
- The Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Lord (Nevyansk, Sverdlovsk Region).
- The Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the St. Nicholas Monastery (Sverdlovsk Region, Verkhoturye).
- The Church dedicated to the Protection of the Holy Theotokos in the Monastery of the Protection of the Holy Mother of God (Sverdlovsk Region, Verkhotursky).
- The Church of the Protection of St. Simeon the Just of Verkhoturye (Sverdlovsk Region, Verkhoturye district, Merkushino village).
- The Church of the Resurrection of the Lord with the Lower Church of St. Andrew the First-Called Apostle in the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Stavropegian Monastery (Republic of Karelia, Valaam Island).
- The Cathedral in the Name of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Stavropegate Monastery (Republic of Karelia, Valaam Island).
- The Church of the Nativity of Christ (Leningrad region, Priozersk).
- The Church of the Iveron Icon of the Holy Theotokos (Kemerovo, Kedrovka settlement).
- The Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos (Moscow region, Dmitrovsky district, Shukolovo village).
- The Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia (Kurgan region, Shadrinsk).
- The Church of the Nativity of Christ (Krasnodar Territory, Armavir).
- The Convent of the Mercy of Martha and Mary (Moscow).
- The Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius (Moscow Region, Sergiev Posad) — copper for the main bell.
- The Church of the Holy Blood in the Name of All Saints Who Shined on the Land of Russia (Ekaterinburg).
- The Skete of St. Vladimir in the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Stavropegian Monastery (Republic of Karelia, Valaam Island).
- Cathedral in the Name of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (Kemerovo region, Prokopyevsk).
But what about the mosques, for example, for the inhabitants of Muslim lands from which UGMK extracts resources, destroying their health and lives? The first news that search engines provide in response to the relevant query is the active participation of the UGMK in the demolition of the Nur Usman Mosque in Ekaterinburg.
Yes, we didn’t say construction or restoration, but demolition. It turns out that in this situation, which we wrote about, UGMK insisted on the demolition of the mosque from the legal point of view, because it was built on its land, which was intended for the construction of an ice arena.
To be fair, we found another news story from almost 20 years ago — about UGMK sponsoring the construction of a mosque in Verkhnyaya Pyshma. It was a time when the real dominance of the Russian Orthodox Church in the country was not established, as it is now, and the authorities more or less tried to adhere to the constitutional norms of separation of state and church.
There were rumors about UGMK’s involvement in other projects for the restoration and construction of mosques, for example, the Cathedral Mosque in Ufa. This story was extremely strange — the money for the construction of the mosque was allegedly allocated by the UGMK in strict secrecy (apparently in order not to damage its Orthodox image) and eventually disappeared just as mysteriously.
In summary, the UGMK is involved in the construction of dozens of Orthodox churches, while for the Muslims, whose land resources it extracts, it involved the demolition of one mosque and the construction of another already in 2001. This is the Orthodox-Muslim balance of colonialism as exemplified by the UGMK in Putin’s Russia.