Environmental Protestors Attacked By Masked Men in Khimki Forest

The Khimki forest is located just 5km to the North of Moscow, and is a part of Russia’s equivalent of “Green Belt”, intended to protect the forest. A new motorway is to be built through the forest, connecting Moscow and St Petersburg, dividing the forest with is valuable eco-system in half. The issue has attracted a great deal of opposition, and appears to be escalating.  Mikhail Beketov, the editor-in-in chief of a small local  newspaper in the Moscow suburbs   and an outspoken critic of the development was seriously injured after being assaulted and beaten outside his home in November 2009. The attack is believed by many to be connected with his newspaper’s opposition.
 
2 days ago (July 23rd), a group of environmental activists mounting a round the clock vigil in the forest were violently attacked by masked men, seemingly with the cooperation of the authorities. Just after 5 a.m. about 100 masked men appeared at the ecologists' camp, threatening to "kill" them. At the same time, loggers started felling trees close to the camp.
 
About 40 riot police then turned up at the camp and detained a dozen activists, including 2 journalists, one of who was hospitalised with a neck injury obtained during the attack. At least a dozen detained activists were then taken before a court, where they faced action for allegedly resisting arrest and obstructing traffic.
 
The previous day, 5 protestors were arrested in Moscow, at a bizarre ceremony in which Vladimir Putin was due to be presented with chips of timber from trees felled in the Khimki forest near to the city’s Sheremetyevo airport.
 
The attack is not as serious as those suffered by previous environmental protestors in Russia. An attack by “neo-Nazis” on an environmentalist protest camp in the Irkutsk region of south-eastern Siberia  left one dead and others wounded in July 2007. The campers, near the city of Angarsk were protesting about the reprocessing of nuclear waste at a state-owned facility in the city. Uranium from a plant in Kazakhstan is to be enriched for export purposes at the centre, which is just 60 miles from the southern tip of Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater lake. Following that attack, A Russian police spokesman subsequently brushed over the attack.
 
 
Photo by ECMO.RU