Khimki Forest

[7][8] The forest's fauna includes foxes, elk, wild boars and a number of species of insects and plants considered endangered.

The activists included local people and a group called "Ecological Defense of the Moscow Region", along with Greenpeace Russia, and the "Left Front" civil movement.

[10] On 22 August, two opposition leaders and a human rights activist who were participating in rallies marking the National Flag Day of Russia were detained.

Three journalists - Anatoliy Adamchuk from Zhukovskiye Vesti, Mikhail Beketov[7][8] from Khimkinskaya Pravda and Oleg Kashin from Kommersant[14] - have been beaten up in what are thought to be attacks linked to their coverage of the protests.

Aleksey Knizhnikov of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) believes that if the logging was stopped right now, the forest would recover in a decade.

[citation needed] The French multinational Vinci jointly with some individuals from Lebanon and Syria owns 50% of the North-West Concession Company, the concessionaire of the project.

[19] During the discussion, representatives of Vinci threatened Russian Government with 4 billion rubles (about 100 million euro) of compensations in case of a longer delay for the change of the routing.