Kremlin Relents, for Now, to Foes of Highway

For years, environmentalists have risked arrests and sometimes beatings by the police and masked plainclothes thugs in their efforts to halt the construction of a highway linking Moscow to St. Petersburg that they say would destroy the Khimki Forest, one of the few remaining in the Moscow region.

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

For years, environmentalists have risked arrests and sometimes beatings by the police and masked plainclothes thugs in their efforts to halt the construction of a highway linking Moscow to St. Petersburg that they say would destroy the Khimki Forest, one of the few remaining in the Moscow region.

Typically in Russia, such efforts lead to little but holding cells or worse for proponents of a cause. But supporters of the Khimki Forest were handed a surprising victory on Thursday when President Dmitri A. Medvedev reacted to the public outcry.

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