Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry is to join discussions on new possible routes for a controversial highway whose construction was frozen earlier in the day by President Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev signed a decree earlier in the day to suspend the building of the highway north of Moscow, the Kremlin said. The highway had threatened the destruction of a section of the Khimki forest, part of the Russian capital’s greenbelt, and had stirred up large-scale grassroots protest.
“We are ready to join the discussion of this issue together with the United Russia party, the Russian Transport Ministry, non-governmental and environmental organizations and implement the Russian president’s order,” Natural Resources Minister Rinat Gizatulin said.
Russian environmentalists defending the forest were quick to hail the president's decision.
"We are celebrating victory...a victory for civil society... Even if the decision is not final, the fact itself that the president stopped the cutting down [of the forest] is a great victory," one of the activists who defended the forest, Alla Chernyshova, said.
MOSCOW, August 26 (RIA Novosti)
