The local authorities in the Daghestani city of Kaspiysk were fined ₽300,000 ($5,400) on 14 April, for building on the city’s beach.

In early March, a photograph showing heavy machinery and dug up areas of the beach made the rounds on social networks. It emerged that the city administration was planning to renovate the beach by making paths and green areas. The fact that the administration also planned to construct a hotel, a yacht club, and a boat station, sparked a protest by inhabitants of Makhachkala and Kaspiysk.

An initiative group collected signatures and sent appeals to various official institutions with a request to stop the construction. The West Caspian Territorial Administration of the Federal Agency for Fisheries (Rosrybolovstvo) responded to the request with an inspection.

‘The beach is in a water protection zone, and any economic activity on the beach is prohibited without preliminary agreement. As a result of the inspection, it became clear that economic activities on the beach in Kaspiysk were carried out without coordination with the administration of Rosrybolovstvo. The sandy shore of the sea was covered with rubble up to to the water’s edge’, OC Media was told by the press service of Rosrybolovstvo.