THIS SUMMER A FOREST north of Moscow is shaping up to be a battleground for environmental activists and construction workers.
Khimki Forest — a cause celebre for many Russian activists — is located near the Moscow suburb of Khimki, between the capital and Sheremetyevo airport. The forest has been in the news since the first plans to build a new road through the forest triggered opposition in a local newspaper Khimki Pravda. In 2008, the paper’s stocky, energetic editor and activist, Mikhail Beketov, was beaten nearly to death after he voiced opposition to the project. Today he remains an invalid, unable to speak and learning to walk again.
Few doubt that the traffic-clogged road between Moscow and St. Petersburg needs to expand. And in recent years, expansion of Sheremetyevo and construction of new shopping centers along the route have all but turned the ribbon of road into a parking lot. But activists say the new toll road that will make a wide loop through the heart of Khimki Forest is not about traffic abatement, but merely a pretext for developers to snap up cheap public land and line the road with additional warehouses, offices, and supermarkets.
The activists, led by Yevgenia Chirikova, have tried to block logging work for the road since last summer, alleging that construction workers do not have proper legal documents to log the forest. After a particularly nasty incident last summer, when masked thugs destroyed the activists’ forest camp and beat up several environmentalists, President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a stop to the works and asked for additional studies.
But now summer work has resumed, and dozens of activists have been beaten, detained, and are living in constant fear. Logging is nearly completed, yet environmentalists say it’s not too late to halt the project, and that the ecosystem would recover within a decade.
For activists, the battle for Khimki is a bellwether, as there are many “Khimkis” across Russia — be it in Krasnodar region, where logging in the Utrish Reserve turned out to be the first step in a plan to build a government residence on a beautiful seaside plot, or at the magnificent Lake Baikal, which continues to be polluted by a loss-making, derelict paper plant in Irkutsk region.
Indeed, Khimki has become a symbol of resistance to government decisions made without consulting scientists or citizens. More and more, the demands of environmentalists have turned political, because complaints to official environmental protection services rarely bring results, while police often detain activists who use their bodies to block illegal works (most of the time activists are let go in police stations or courtrooms).
Yevgenia Chirikova, who only two years ago said she was “just a Russian woman who is far removed from politics,” recently said she hopes that Russia will eventually have its own Green party.
The latest move by Khimki environmental activists is the establishment in June of a civil society camp in the forest, where environmental NGOs are teaming up with popular figures like Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption activist, for workshops, concerts, and the like. The camp is called Antiseliger (antiseliger.ru), in reference to the Seliger summer camp organized by the pro-Kremlin Nashi movement.
The ball is now in the government’s court.
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