Zelonoye koltso, Protected forest area in Gorodishchensky District, Volgograd Oblast, Russia

Zelonoye koltso is a protected natural area in the Volgograd region featuring rolling hills, grassland, and scattered trees across the landscape. The terrain offers wide open spaces that are generally easy to walk through.

Work on the Green Ring began in 1935, when a dedicated forest-melioration machine and tractor station was set up at Sadovaya station with its headquarters there. Its task was to green the outskirts of Stalingrad between 1935 and 1947 with a belt 3–7 km wide and 50 km long, covering 200 km². By the start of the Great Patriotic War 1,360 hectares had been planted; fighting destroyed or damaged much of it, and by 1 January 1966 the ring held 3,719 hectares of artificial plantings across four separate tracts.

The name comes from the 50 km belt, 3–7 km wide, planted around Stalingrad from 1935. The Sadovaya station housed the headquarters of the Stalingrad forest-planting machine-tractor station, the first of its kind in the USSR, whose work was shown at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. The ring also supplied the city with fruit and berries and opened land for dacha building.

Come prepared for a full day outdoors by bringing water, comfortable shoes, and perhaps a picnic. As a protected area, visitors must follow rules: avoid disturbing the land, plants, and animals, and leave no trash behind.

The "ring" is not a geometric circle but four separate tracts of 500 to 3,000 hectares each, as recorded on 1 January 1966, when the green zone held 6,800 hectares of plantings. The belt was meant to block sand-laden dust from the Volga bank and to supply the city with fruit and berries; its orchards and vineyards were shown at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition.