First, to reach the reindeer moss forest, where the camp is located, you need to get to the urban-type settlement of Novoagansk, which stands upon the Agan in the center of the West Siberian Lowland in the North-East of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.

The distance between Nizhnevartovsk and the village is 230 kilometers, you can go here by car or bus, which runs once a day and arrives at the destination at 9PM. As soon as you get off the bus, midges swarm all over you. There are many mosquitoes and gadflies, and the repellent is of no use. For a trip to the forest, special equipment is required: clothes that will not be bitten through by insects and a face vile.

The only guest house for the whole village is called Tayozhnaya: three rooms with shared shower and a toilet on the floor.

— Recently, locals are trying to leave the village, — says Anastasia Zorova, the owner of the hotel, while checking us in. — Apartments are rented out here simply for payment of utility services.

It turned out in the morning that there was no cafe or dining room, where you could have breakfast, in the village. A young man with a tanned face is waiting for us in the street near the UAZ. This is Sasha Aipin, the local Khanty, the son of the head of the family.

Khanty believe that they are all descended from some animal or bird. The family tree of the Aipin family is very ancient. At the beginning of the first decades of the XX century, representatives of three Khanty clans — Bear, Elk, Beaver — lived upon the Agan. The Aipins are descended from Beaver, they are the keepers of the sacred places of Khanty, where, according to legends, the Agan goddess lives.

Each family consists of several family lines. Representatives of the same family belong to the same dynasty, although they may have different surnames. The head of the family is usually the eldest and most educated member of the family. This is Sasha's father Semyon Alexandrovich Aipin in the Aipin family.

Today, six families (some of them are from the Aipin family) live on the territory of the Agan reindeer moss forest, which lines up the Agan for 80 kilometers. They are all reindeer herders. According to the traditional way of life, reindeer are pastured half-freely: no one follows the animals with a twig, as if it was a cow — they walk through the forest and return to their owners at the camp themselves. So the number always varies: some might be killed by predators, jacklighters or oil workers, run over by equipment, other get frightened by car noises and run far away from home, never to come back. Sasha found it difficult to say how many deer the families might have had at the moment — about 200 or 300. That is for everyone.

The reindeer moss is not far from here, about 12 kilometers. Our first stop was a landfill three kilometers from the village. A huge pit (three hectares) in the ground is filled with tons of waste: plastic, bags, furniture. It is literary the mountain amid the forest.

We came across some containers for separate waste collection in Novoagansk. But the garbage in the pit is obviously not sorted.

— There used to be a good, strong forest used by reindeer as a pasture, — says Sasha. — Herders used to live in a camp a kilometer from here. But in the late 60s, when the city began to be built, reindeer moss was demolished, they dug a pit and made a dump. Reindeer were gone, people were gone. So it goes, of course, life is changing, people need to store garbage somewhere, but it's a pity that the problem was solved like this. When this pit is full, most likely, all this garbage will just be buried.

We are going on in silence, passing by the local cemetery, after which the asphalt ends and the unsurfaced road begins.

Sasha asks to hide photo and video equipment with a tripod: soon we are going to reach a checkpoint, it is better not to draw attention to ourselves. We stop in front of the auto barrier in 10 kilometers. A man wearing uniform got out of the trailer, walked around our car without looking inside and without asking for documents, raised the barrier. Sasha explains: they know his car here, so there are no questions to the guests either. Besides, oil workers mainly explore now. When they find oil, the next phase of the development of the licensed site will begin, they will make a first-class all-weather road here, the entry to the territory will be limited.

In 2013, the LUKOIL — Western Siberia, under a license valid until 2036, began to develop the Martaller oilfield about 23 kilometers to the West from Novoagansk, on the lands of the Agan forestry. The area of the oilfield is about 200 hectares. Tribal lands are registered on this territory; they are assigned to those heads who live in the Agan forest. Sasha is sure: if the Agan forest is not protected today, oil workers will level it with the ground within 25 years. The traditional farming of the Aipins might disappear even sooner: the oil company has installed Oil-Well 90P two kilometers from their camp.

There is no road beyond the checkpoint, the car is shaking on the bumps, we have to fight off the gadflies, which cannot be shooed from the cabin.

The Aipin family's camp is located in a spacious clearing, a huge territory is occupied by a wooden deer-fenced area, which serves as an inspection pen for reindeer. The farmstead looks civilized: there is an MTS satellite dish on the roof of the hut, next to it is a bath-house and a warehouse for storing food on high poles. A little further is a shed, under which fishing nets, staghorns, household equipment and building materials are stored. There is a wooden house with smoke billowing from the doorway at the edge of the camp. This is a reindeer-house, Sasha explains, reindeer come there to rest from the midges. A portbelly stove there serves as a smudge. Reindeer are lying nearby, on the ground, they look thin. He says that it is always like this in summer, but the deer will put on weight, become beautiful and their fur will grow back by winter.

There is no electricity. Khanty do their household chores by daylight and turn on the electric generator in the evening. The hut inside has no rooms, and this gives a feeling of freedom and space: a kitchen corner for cooking is to the right of the entrance, there is a gas stove on the table and a portbelly stove next to it. On the left is a dining area: a table, chairs, everything is modest, only the necessary things. Against the far wall is a sleeping platform with mattresses. Traditional shirts, handkerchiefs, towels hang on the wall. There is also a plasma TV and a desk with a laptop.

Only Sasha's parents live at the camp permanently. Sasha and his family live in the village of Variogan ('spot net river' in the Khanty language) which is seven kilometers from Novoagansk: his two sons go to the village kindergarten and spend holidays and weekends with their grandparents. His wife does the housework and raises the kids.

Sasha wants to provide his sons with a proper education. He himself has a higher pedagogical education and an unfinished second higher: due to illness, he had to quit studying state and municipal administration (extension department). Sasha does not want to go back to the Institute: there is no money, it is necessary to raise sons and to farm which is the source of the family income — to collect mushrooms, berries, cedar nuts, to sell venison. The LUKOIL pays his family compensation of 6 thousand rubles per person every quarter. Oil workers provide little gasoline, says reindeer herder, amount of the combined feed for deer is decreased every year, still it will not replace reindeer moss.

Sasha Aipin used to work as a physical education teacher once. In 2010, he quit and tried to develop domestic tourism: he decided to build guest houses, organize deer safaris, fishing with a national color, ritual bear hunting fests and even outdoor yoga classes at the camp. For three years he participated in regional grant competitions in the field of ethno-tourism, but his business project never received support. And then came the LUKOIL.

We are having tea. Sasha says: big oil was discovered in the Nizhnevartovsk district in the 1960s, the first barges with exploration rigs went down the Agan. The first meeting of oil workers with Khanty took place exactly on the right side of the Agan.

— Our elderly men said they had treated the strangers with kindness, according to the traditions of the Northern man. The oil workers of the Soviet Union used to negotiate with indigenous people, and our elderly men let them come. And no one foresaw back then, of course, to what this would lead. Since the 1970s, Khanty began to disappear: alcohol appeared, people, who had lived in the forest and had not known about it, got used to it. Khanty began to drown, to get sick, to leave the forest for the village. Then there were the heady 1990s. So there are no elderly people knowing about the events of those years anymore, the nation is dying out. Alcoholism and suicide are widespread among Khanty youth today — the whole generation of Khanty was thrown ashore, there is almost no work in the settlements, they do not know what they want. There are those who manage to take advantage of benefits, to get a job in a budget organization or an oil company, but there are very few of them.

A sandy wasteland. In front of us are the remains of fallen trunks, almost no vegetation. The sky, which was blue and sunny a few minutes ago, is full of low clouds — the weather is treacherous here.

— We are in the North-Eastern part of the territory, which was to become a wildlife preserve. Reindeer moss used to grow here. In the early 2000s, oil workers needed a road to the Mogutlor oilfield, about 50 kilometers from here. They needed sand to fill the road, so they cut down the trees here and made a quarry. No one can say when the forest and reindeer moss will grow back. Perhaps they won't, because there's only sand, — says Sasha.

We get into the car again and go deeper into the forest. The road is already well-trodden, there are wheel marks everywhere, streaking the pale green carpet of reindeer moss in different directions. Sasha explains:

— They are driving around from one mushroom to another. You see someone like this, you reproach him: leave the car and go on foot. They say, "I don't want to! Who are you?" I go like: "I am a reindeer herder, this is a reindeer pasture." Some react aggressively, begin to threaten with some kind of violence... We're losing reindeer. Not just our family — the others, too. Reindeer pasture on their own. Newcomers shoot domestic deer — not the wild ones — for meat even without realizing it. And there is absolutely no understanding of how to behave in the woods.

According to Khanty, there are two issues today — oil workers' industrial developments and such unfriendly visits from Raduzhny, Nizhnevartovsk, Pokachi, who wish to go to the Agan forest for mushrooms and berries. Fishermen drive through the forest by cars to the river. Visitors leave garbage everywhere: bottles of beer and vodka, plastic, paper. Sasha believes that the road, which oil workers filled from Novoagansk and Pokachi, opened the way to people who do not understand that there are people in the forest, fed by it and everything inside it, that this is someone's farm.

Spontaneous roads are intertwined with fire trenches and glades — seismic profiles, which, as Sasha said, were laid with the help of logging equipment during searches for mineral deposits.

Lichen, or reindeer moss, looks like a sponge. It is very fragile, if you step on this soft carpet in dry weather, as Sasha explained, the base of the moss, its stem, will crumble. Lichen grows for a very long time after that — it takes about 60 years for it to recover from injuries caused by people's feet and car wheels. And reindeer moss is 90 percent of reindeer's diet. Deer is able to smell moss at a distance of up to five kilometers and even get it from under the deep snow. And most importantly: eating this lichen, animals get rid of intestinal parasites. If a deer stops eating the moss, it will get sick and die. And Khanty do not exaggerate when they talk about the value of reindeer moss and say that it needs to be saved from destruction: no moss — no reindeer.

The landscape outside the car window changes: the coniferous forest gives way to burnt stumps sticking out everywhere. In 2012, there was another disaster — KhMAO suffered from abnormal heat and massive forest fires. The Agan forest did not avoid the trouble — all the reindeer moss on the territory of the Aipin family burned down. It was possible to save only one small area of pasture almost in the center of the Beaver descendants' tribal lands.

— Here, take a look, — Sasha takes a piece of almost black sponge in his hands, squeezes it, and it crumbles with a crunch. Lots of similar burnt pieces of reindeer moss lie around, so it is constantly crunching underfoot. Sasha says that this land is now called Gorel'nik ('burnt wood'): it is dead; it will take 90 years or even more for it to recover.

Our next lookout point is Oil-Well 20P of the South-Roslavl oilfield, owned by RussNeft. We see the same signs that the forest had guests: bottles lying along the artificial road of sand, one-and-a-half-liter plastic bottles on the tree branches. According to Sasha Aipin, visitors leave such "decorations" for a reason: they serve as road signs. It looks like vandalism.

We are passing by the oil-well in silence: glass containers, some rags, Doshirak cups, empty aerosol cans. An industrial rumble is heard at the multi-well pad, there is a portable cabin, a shower cabin, but no people — there is no one to talk to.

— So sad and difficult to see it like this. Now we're going further, right around the corner. It's much worse there, — says Sasha.

Spontaneous camp sites of the fishermen and mushroom pickers do seem much worse. Tall thin pine trees, green grass — and bulks of waste. Bags, bottles, plastic, tin cans, disposable utensils — everything that can be taken out into the city and thrown into a dumpster is lying in a heap next to a makeshift table with a single unfinished bottle of vodka.

— That's what the Agan reindeer moss forest looks like today. Soon it will turn into one entire dump... People don't understand. Well, you come to the forest — do not destroy, do not break anything, take as much as necessary, and leave without making a mess. We need a law on the moss, the forest requires conservation status. What are my sons going to get? Garbage? Sometimes I look at all this — and the hair stands on end, my heart shrinks!

We made a few more stops in the forest. Everything is the same — household garbage, truck cabs, left to rust from the beginning of development, geologists' trailers, and huge tangles of wire. And even an old broken chair.

Sasha decided to show us the patrimonial cemetery. Wooden structures shaped like elongated houses with a gable roof are here and there in the clearing. They are called "domoviks" (or the houses of the dead). Graves of different sizes, a lot of children's graves — as a rule, they have a bird, not a cross. The roofs of some houses are destroyed and the cross is tumbled down from age. The reindeer herder did not allow to remove the patrimonial cemetery at once, considering that there was no need to disturb ancestors. No one has been buried here since the 1980s. It is an artifact that makes all those left wheels, rusty cabins and bottles seem even wilder and out of place.

The main forest unsurfaced road was once laid by RussNeft to its 20th well pad. Today, it leads to the wells of different companies that have licensed sites on the territory of the Agan forest. To get to Oil-Well 90, in 2013, the LUKOIL oil workers needed one more road, and they intended to lay it through the land of reindeer herders, that is, also through the reindeer moss forest. To do this, they had to obtain permission from indigenous people, to coordinate the route with them.

Khanty did not sign their death warrant, but allowed the oil producer to use the corridor in the North of their lands — there are swamp areas, which Khanty decided to sacrifice for the preservation of the reindeer moss pasture. Oil workers found the roundabout way with swamps economically unprofitable. They cheated by means of having brought the heavy-duty special vehicles at night. Khanty went to the police, a few days later the LUKOIL subsidiary enterprise — the Pokachyovneftegaz, which is engaged in the mineral management, — was forced to take out the equipment. Police made sure there was no clash between Khanty and oil company workers.

After this incident, Sasha Aipin asked the staff of international environmental organization Greenpeace Russia and journalists for help. Not only local media responded, but also journalists from other countries — Finland, Poland, Belgium, and Italy. Semyon Aypin, the head of the family, found lawyer Galina Obolenskaya, who advised to demand compensation of 5 million rubles from the oil company. Oil workers did not want to pay so much and appealed to the authorities of the region with a request to urgently hold a Commission on the Territories of Traditional Nature Use of the KhMAO, at which they tried to prove the right to work on their licensed site.

The meeting of indigenous residents and representatives of the LUKOIL was held in Khanty-Mansiysk, in the Department of Natural Resources. The parties failed to agree. At the Commission, officials suggested creating a natural monument, the Khanty approved it, but the Commission still found in favor of the subsoil user. At the end of 2013, the Aipins appealed to the Okrug Governor on a direct line to protect the rights of the family and stop the destruction of the reindeer moss forest. But nothing helped: in 2014, the company laid a winter road and transported heavy equipment to the tribal lands' territory.

In the same year, Khanty caught out the oil workers going through the reindeer moss without permission again. In spring, the district's media published the news: Khanty put their tents in the way of cars and "held the line" for several days. According to Sasha, the tents were placed next to the road — and not to block the passage, but to watch special equipment and not let it go further until the authorities arrive at the place.

Oil workers told the police that they suffered losses because of the actions of local residents, but they refused to initiate a case. Only after this scandal Natalia Komarova, the Head of Yugra, reacted: she supported the demands of Khanty to back off from the only surviving section of the Agan forest. The oilers retreated, but only temporarily.

The road, which was laid illegally, remained. We quickly reached the site with a metal fence and a large gate — Oil-Well R-90, where the conflict began. The distance between it and the camp is just two kilometers. Sasha saw the open gate and got upset:

— They promised to weld it. The supports are dug out, the traces are fresh — they tore off the fence and put it back again.

The site is empty and quiet. There are crew Ural cars, portable cabins. A man looked out from behind one of them and hid when he saw us. Sasha says: relations with the subsoil user, who opened this extension well two kilometers from the camp, did not go right at once.

— From the very beginning the LUKOIL — Western Siberia started with deception. Not saying a word, paying no regard to us, they began to bring heavy equipment here, directly through our pastures, although we tried to have an equal dialogue with them and expressed our wishes. Having signed the agreement for development of the 90th well, we were all deceived, promised a lot in the contract, but we got nothing from the promised.

According to the Khanty, the gates through which we passed to the multi-well pad should not be there. They should be welded, so that oil workers' equipment went the other way, not through the reindeer moss forest. But the LUKOIL workers trespass and leave Well Pad 90 this way regularly, removing the gate and putting it back. Sometimes the Aipins' reindeer come through the open gate to the multi-well pad territory and get lost.

—Sergey Shishkin, the CEO of the Pokachyovneftegaz, promised that everything would be closed and the equipment would no longer leave the territory from this side through the reindeer moss forest. No, their way or the highway. At the same time, the compensations are petty, oil workers do not appropriate enough money for children's education or health maintenance. That is, they are destroying our traditional life, forcing us to leave our land, to move to the city, and there we are going to die out as mammoths did, — Sasha argues.

According to the reindeer herder, the LUKOIL — Western Siberia intends to build a road through the reindeer pasture from the 90th extension well to the Agan River, and then arrange a bridge or a crossing there. There is another field of the company on the other side of the Agan, beyond the Peninsula — Shchuchye, it is planned to make a hydraulically placed quarry there.

— Ask your bosses. I do what I was told to do. It is none of my business — I've got work to do.

Sasha asks the driver of the Kirovets car to show his waybill. The document is almost empty. Multi-Well Pad 90 is specified as object of work for the Kirovets car, it had to arrive and remain there. But the tractor left. Vasily explained: the authorities ordered to accompany two vehicles — a low roader and a Vityaz landrover — to the West Mogutlor oil field.

— But you don't have this waypoint on your waybill…

— Well, they'll add it later, it won't take much time.

— But that's a fabrication!

— What does it have to do with me?

Sasha asks Vasily to leave the tractor at the gate and calls Yuri Furman, the Head of the Department for Work with the Indigenous Population of LLC LUKOIL — Western Siberia. The signal is poor; Sasha is talking on speakerphone. At first, talking to the reindeer herder, Furman tries to defend the right to transport special equipment on an unapproved route through the reindeer most forest, he says the equipment goes on the road, not haphazardly straight. Then, when Aipin reminds him that the company must work according to the law, he flinches: "Which law?" And when the reindeer herder says that he has an empty waybill, which, according to the driver, will later be filled in properly, the Head of Work with the Indigenous Population declares that this is sloppiness.

— Sloppiness? What are you talking about, Yuri Stanislavovich? The CEO of the Pokachyovneftegaz — the company's frontman — promised me to weld the gate!

— We'll weld it in two days! We had to get to the facility right away!

— So why didn't you negotiate it with us?

— We couldn't find you!

— Yuri Stanislavovich, when you really need, you nearly fly a helicopter to find someone you need.

— Well, I could not, okay?

When Sasha says that the tractor will not go any further until the police arrive, Furman hangs up with the words:

— You want a scandal, huh? Well, whatever, suit yourself.

According to Sasha, the tractor returned the same way on the next day. He photographed the waybills and how the workers removed the gate to reach Well Pad 90 of the Martaller oil field. Representatives of the Pokachyovneftegaz company ignored the request of 7x7 about the incident at the gate.

In 2011, even before the beginning of exploitation of mineral resources in the Agan forest by the LUKOIL — Western Siberia, residents of Variogan and Elena Semenchenko, the Chairman of the Variogan branch of the Saving Yugra public organization of the Nizhnevartovsk district, went to the Department for Natural Resources and Non-Energy Sector of the Economy of KhMAO — Yugra (now the Department for Subsoil Use and Natural Resources). Activists asked officials to create a specially protected area in the Agan forest — to protect and preserve the ancestral lands and fishing grounds of Khanty on the right side of the Agan River. Semenchenko wrote to Yeremey Aypin, the Chairman of the Assembly of Representatives of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the North of the Yugra Duma and the reindeer herders' relative. Yeremey Aypin supported his countrymen and Elena Semenchenko. Thanks to his intervention in 2011–2012, officials of the region initiated the assignment of the status of a specially protected natural area to the Agan forest — it was to become a state forest reserve of regional significance named Yagelny.

Yevgeny Platonov, the former Head of the Department, suggested assigning the status of a natural monument to the territory — then the district would pay compensation to the LUKOIL and the company would leave the lands of the Khanty of the Agan.

In 2015, the Department began preparing materials for the creation of a specially protected natural area. The authorities of Yugra ordered a combined expedition of the Agan River to the Institute of Geological Information Systems. The right and left confluents were studied by ecologists, geographers and biologists. The area of the supposed reserve was to be 376 km².

The procedure for creating a protected area was very slow. The LUKOIL — Western Siberia was already engaged into the subsoil development, trucks and tractors were driving through the reindeer moss. The Aipins had no choice but to wait. Since oil workers had come to the lands of Khanty, the family had to move the camp to a new place for five times. According to Sasha Aipin, there is nowhere to go now: this place, which has become the part of the licensed site, is the last place where reindeer can live on, there are no more reindeer moss areas in the Agan forest.

As explained by Tatiana Merkushina, the former Head of the Office for Especially Protected Natural Areas in the Department for Natural Resources, specialists made a blueprint for the reserve, drew the borders, excluding the licensed sites that had already been on the Agan forest's territory and areas that do not belong to the territory of the reindeer moss forest. These lands were secured by a government decree, but the situation has changed by now.

— At the end of 2018 — the beginning of 2019, there was an agreement on changing the concept, and all these previously reserved specially protected areas had to be extended. But instead, the Department of Natural Resources simply struck them off the list and let them be divided into new licensed sites, — Merkushina said. — Officials are cutting off pieces of the Agan forest's territory, which will be impossible to save in future.

Leonid Grazianov, the consultant of the Office for Especially Protected Natural Areas in the Department for Subsoil Use and Natural Resources, said that there would be no wildlife reserve: there will be a protected natural monument named Yagelny instead. The website of the Yugra Nature Supervision says that the creation of the monument with an area of 4 thousand hectares is planned within the framework of the Ecology National Project until 2024. But Grazianov mentioned another figure — about 8 thousand hectares. When asked about the violation of the rights of Khanty and their complaints, he said: "Nobody asked us — there had already been licensed sites. It was necessary to think about the protection of the territory of the reindeer moss forest, which performs, in fact, the function of a deer pasture, much earlier."

Grazianov heard that oil workers were planning to build the route through the reindeer moss forest, but these plans, he considers, are impossible to carry out: the road is going to be outside their licensed site, this territory is included into the national project. The head of the Nizhnevartovsk district participates in the national project as an expert, he also takes part in the consideration of documents. There will be no road.

7x7 did not get a clear comment of the Pokachyovneftegaz. The company referred to the law guaranteeing the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples when asked how relations with local Khanty were being built and how the subsoil user intended to solve the problem of destroying the last reindeer moss pasture in the Agan forest. Sergei Shishkin, the Head of the Pokachyovneftegaz, refused to talk about the plans for the road construction, pleading commercial confidentiality.

Experts who participated in the expeditions say that the Agan forest, one of the largest forests in Yugra, must be preserved: this is a resource for taiga reindeer herding, a habitat for upland game, a rich berry land, several species of rare plants grow there.

Dmitry Moskovchenko, Doctor of Geographical Sciences, the Head of the Geo-Ecology Sector of the Tyumen Scientific Center of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, led the expedition in 2015 and 2018. His group identified places of worship: the ancestral cemeteries of the Aipin and Sardakov families, the Evut-Rap sight, where, according to legends, the Agan goddess — patroness of the Agan Khanty — lives. Experts believe that the status of a wildlife reserve is a necessity, because oil field development, illegal dumping and grave robbers plundering Khanty burials jeopardize the safety of the forest.

Sasha Aipin and his father filed a lawsuit. At the very first hearing on September 24, 2019, it became clear that oil workers had permits: the heads of the families Irina Tyrlina, Nikolai and Yevgeny Aipin had signed a supplemental agreement, which gave oil workers the right to go through the reindeer moss pasture by car.

Semyon Aypin, Sasha's father, also found his signature in the document and was very surprised: he does not remember signing something like that. Semyon Aypin is the patriarch of the family, heads of other families usually consult with him, Sasha has no idea how come that they signed documents without having discussed such an important question. A supplemental agreement, dated November 2018, appeared in the hands of Semyon Aipin on July 18, 2019 — after the incident with the Kirovets car at the gate. The document was brought to the camp by Yuri Furman himself. Semyon Aypin tells:

— We were having tea, discussing things, and we brought up the gate, and at some point we had a quarrel. He took out the papers, threw them onto the table in silence and left. I went out and followed Furman, asked him to come back, to explain which documents he'd thrown, but he silently got into the car and drove away. The papers were just the supplemental agreement and a location map for transport.

According to Semyon Aipin, he could not agree upon the location map, which is mentioned in the documents from Furman, as there previously were two court challenges (the LUKOIL was the complainant), both won by the Khanty: the road in the location map is no actual road, only individuals, residents of the neighborhood (mushroom pickers, fishermen) can use it, and special equipment can be transported through it only with the permission of the indigenous inhabitants.

At the last meeting, the court appointed a handwriting examination to find out who had actually signed the location map for oil workers.

On August 14, a round table on environmental rights of citizens was held in Surgut at a visiting session of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. Sasha Aipin managed to get there — he learned about the meeting from the HRC experts, who invited him to the meeting. Khanty told about the situation around the Agan reindeer moss forest and the dealings with the LUKOIL — Western Siberia Oil Company.

Elena Sakirko, the expert of the Russian branch of Greenpeace as part of the official delegation of the Human Rights Council, is a member of the working group on Small Indigenous Peoples of the North (SIPN) in the HRC. According to her, Konstantin Belyaev, the chief surveyor of the LUKOIL — Western Siberia Company, reacted to Sasha's speech quite aggressively: "You have signed everything, stop talking nonsense!"

— It is difficult to predict how the situation of the Aipins might end. The signature in documents can belong to the head of the family to whom representatives of the company, as it often happens in practice with indigenous people, didn't explain what he was actually signing, — Sakirko considers. — In general, a lawyer from the side of indigenous people must be present when signing documents — there is a law on free legal aid. But many people don't know about it or can't use it, because they may be pressured by the company. The signature may have been forged. In any case, the Aipins were right to have gone to court.

The HRC recommended to consider the conflict on using the road out of court and to find alternative solutions that would take the interests of Khanty into account. It is difficult to predict how the KhMAO government and executive authorities will react and work with the recommendations, Sakirko says.

Another recommendation for the authorities of the region is to introduce the post of the Ombudsman for the Protection of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the North, which is not present in the Okrug yet (and it is possible that it will not be).

According to Natalia Strebkova, the Ombudsman of the KhMAO, the number of complaints from indigenous people of the North increased from five in 2015 to 216 in 2018. Among them, there are 46 applications asking to provide a consultation on protecting the guaranties for a native habitat. But the official believes that introducing the post of a separate SIPN-rights ombudsman in the region is "impractical." Strebkova said this in March 2019 at a meeting of the Duma of the KhMAO, where she presented a special report on guarantees of the rights of indigenous peoples of the North. She referred to the experience of Russian regions, where indigenous people were 30% of the population, but there was no post of the SIPN-rights ombudsman.