Russia - ACTING UP - Khimki Forest
1,588 views · Published 29 December 2011 · 2:45 · Indexed 26 September 2026
Channel: Human Rights Watch · 2011 · Nonprofits & Activism
ACTING UP - RUSSIA'S CIVIL SOCIETY - Portraits by Platon for Human Rights Watch - The environmental activists camped out in the Khimki Forest near Moscow have become a national symbol of resistance to corrupt authority. For the last four years, they have been trying to prevent a highway being built straight through the last old-growth oak forest in the Moscow region. Led by a charismatic young suburban mother, Evgeniya Chirikova, the group has attracted some of Russia's best-known writers, musicians, and other cultural figures to the cause. Local police and unidentified thugs periodically appear to beat them up; at the time this picture was taken, Chirikova was walking with a cane from one such beating. While the stand-off in the forest continues, the movement can claim one clear victory: a new term has been coined in Russian, to defend something "like the Khimki Forest." It means to stand your ground until the very end.
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