In 2012, the question was raised of excluding the Moscow Kremlin from the list of World Heritage Sites. According to UNESCO representatives, this is due to the unwillingness of the Russian authorities to provide a detailed report on the state of the architectural monument.
In 2012, representatives of the World Heritage Committee said that they had been asking for five years to send them a report on the safety of Red Square and the Kremlin, but still had not received it. One document was provided, but it did not contain the necessary information, and therefore it was not adopted. Now UNESCO is warning that if a report is not sent in the coming months with a detailed account of the state of the Kremlin, plans for its maintenance and reconstruction, etc., this architectural monument will be permanently deleted from the list of World Heritage Sites.
One of the reasons for the dissatisfaction of UNESCO representatives was the work in the Kremlin, about which the authorities did not consider it necessary to notify the Committee. In particular, we are talking about repairs in the 14th building, as well as the addition of turnstiles at the entrance, the construction of pavilions and the construction of an additional building on the territory of the Kremlin and Red Square. Such changes directly related to architectural monuments had to be reported in advance. Perhaps this was not done due to the fact that there is no single council that would deal with all issues related to the Kremlin as an architectural monument. Because of this, even Russian experts, not to mention foreign ones, do not have the necessary information either about the state of the Kremlin, nor about the plans for its content, nor about the work being done in it.
Employees of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation are seriously worried about the fate of the Kremlin and are trying to do everything to prevent its exclusion from the World Heritage List. The fact is that UNESCO representatives have repeatedly applied similar sanctions against other historical monuments. So in 2009, Dresden was excluded from the list, and hopes for his return are illusory. The issue of depriving the status of a World Heritage Site from Lake Baikal, Seville, Yaroslavl, St. Sophia Cathedral, Smolny and others is also being addressed.
