In the Sverdlovsk region, employees of the mining company Evraz demolished the buildings of the Buddhist monastery Shedrub Ling on Mount Kachkanar. Members of the community posted photos and videos in their VKontakte group.
“Only the Buddha statue and stupa remained. We are not allowed there. There is no more equipment there,” Vasily Abuzarov, a member of the Buddhist community, told E1.RU.
Photo: Shedrub Ling Buddhist community/VKontakte
Founded in 1995, the monastery was located next to the Sobstvenno-Kachkanar deposit of titanium-magnetite iron ores. Since 2006, the license for it has been owned by JSC Evraz Kachkanarsky GOK, one of the largest mining and processing enterprises in Russia.
In 2014, the Kachkanarsky city court ordered the demolition of buildings and the release of the site. The demolition deadlines were pushed back several times, the work was entrusted to Evraz. On March 16, 2022, the deadline for the voluntary execution of the decision by the founder of the monastery, Mikhail Sannikov, ended.
The believers said that on March 17, workers with equipment came to them, turned off the video surveillance and began to demolish the buildings. Mayor of Kachkanar Andrei Yaroslavtsev promised that after the work of tourists and community members to the sacred stupas. In 2020, the community coordinated with Evraz GOK a schedule for visiting the stupas after the demolition, which also assumed the allocation of a new place for them, but refused it.