May 12, 2011

In the morning, the cutting down of century-old oaks started near the spring of St. George, despite the fact that the State Company Avtodor (the customer of the project) had assured that the cutting down of the oak grove would not begin. The activists tried to interfere with the cutting. An excavator and a bulldozer were used to uproot the oaks near the spring of St George.

The activists tried to stop the felling down of the trees. PSC guards again bate the people. A kneecap of one of the activists, Dmitriy Monakhov, was damaged intentionally by a well-trained strike. They also tried to steal a camera from journalist Semyon Kolobaev. People laid down before the bulldozer, trying to prevent uprooting of the trees. According to activists, people from the internal security service of the contractor began to steer the bulldozer instead of its driver without knowing properly how to do this. A fallen tree hooked and threw the people down. A tree trunk damaged a leg of Evgenia Chirikova. One of the security guards was caught and squeezed between the falling trees, only due to extreme luck he survived. A doctor in a hospital said that Chirikova now cannot walk for at least 2 days. He was indignant at the cutting down of the forest.

At the same a team of Khimki Landscaping municipal enterprise arrived to the forest with chainsaws, but the activists managed to stop them. A bulldozer continued to work under protection of policemen armed with Kalashnikovs. Major Shkuratov from the 2nd Police Department of Khimki told Suren Gazaryan, who had been beaten in the police station a day before that he would be killed if detained again: they would put the private guards to his jail.

A commission of Greenpeace Russia arrived at a place of cutting intending to calculate the amount of losses inflicted to the forest areas and to learn the scope of the illegal clearing. The policeman Sheruimov refused to introduce himself to Sergey Tsyplenkov, director of Greenpeace Russia. The police refused to stop the works. Greenpeace was unable to do anything.
The environmentalists promised to send to Dmitry Medvedev their assessment of damage, which was made to the Khimki forest by felling of trees for the highway Moscow-St. Petersburg. According to Greenpeace, some trees were cut even out of the strip of land reserved for the motorway.

About 3 p.m. two women who tried to photograph the tags on the cars near Vashutino were attacked. They were beaten with their heads against the door of a car, a gray-haired man ordered to erase their photos. Most likely, the attackers were employees of "PO Teplotekhnik" (now renamed "DorInzhStroyProekt). Garegin Alexandrovich from "Teplotekhnik" is suspected in the beating of activists.

Save Khimki Forest!

RESULT: The track is built, the defenders failed to defend their position (read more...)