Conservationists lose fight to protect Moscow forest from road
AP
The new Moscow to St Petersburg highway will be built through an ancient forest outside the capital as planned, a top official confirmed today, despite environmentalists' outrage over the issue.
The controversy over the Khimki oak forest is not just about irreplaceable trees. The fierce dispute has showcased Russia's gravest social ill: the abuse of power and the dangers associated with trying to expose it.
Environmentalists thought they had scored a rare victory when, in August, President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to the highway construction. But Sergei Ivanov, the deputy prime minister, said the original plan was back in place because the road is needed to alleviate Moscow's chronic traffic congestion and the unbearable delays getting to the city's Sheremetyevo airport.
Television reports said the last word rests with the president. There was no immediate comment by Medvedev.
"On the whole, the need to build this road is, in my opinion, supported by everybody," Ivanov said Tuesday during a televised government meeting.
"No one is contesting the fact that one way or another a road needs to be built" he added. "The consensus comes from all the horrors and nightmares that happen along current parts of the Moscow to St Petersburg highway."
Journalists reporting on the topic have been brutally beaten. Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin was attacked last month and Mikhail Beketov, the founder and editor of a Khimki newspaper, was beaten so viciously in 2008 that he was left brain damaged and unable to speak.
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/14/conservation-moscow-forest-road
Dec. 14, 2010