Russian city loses a forest but may gain a new mayor

WHAT started as a small, private crusade to save a forest just outside Moscow transformed Yevgeniya Chirikova into an opposition star and her city into one of the first battlegrounds in an unprecedented wave of anti-Putin protests.

Now that she is running for mayor, her supporters are wondering if the Kremlin will give her a fair chance to win.

Ms Chirikova’s campaign to lead the boom town of Khimki is seen as a test of the electability of the opposition – and a sign of whether president Vladimir Putin will tolerate dissent outside the confines of the capital.

Angry over a planned motorway that would pave over a forest, the 35-year-old mother-of-two began to speak out in 2006, gradually emerging as a leader of a movement that has increasingly questioned the institutions that dominate daily life across Russia with little open debate.

“I’m an ordinary mum,” she says. “There are people like me everywhere in the country. They must go into government, they must fight for their land.”

Resident Serafima Naumcheva, 61, tempered her high hopes that Ms Chirikova could beat Khimki’s acting mayor Oleg Shakhov, who has Kremlin support and whose career is closely linked to the motorway.

Ms Naumcheva said: “Everyone here likes her, but people say there’s no way she will be elected … I don’t think the election commission will play fair.”

Ms Chirikova handed in her registration papers yesterday for the 14 October vote. She has until 13 September to submit 800 signatures in support of her bid. Scores of opposition candidates have been barred from running in the past by election officials who found fault with signatures or other small details.

Political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin said he was certain that pro-Kremlin election officials would not tolerate the activist being at the helm of the relatively small, but key, city of around 208,000 people.

“I think she won’t be allowed to win because billions of dollars are at stake there,” he said, referring to the Khimki road project.

Ms Chirikova, who holds degrees in aviation and economics, was born in Moscow and moved to Khimki shortly after giving birth to her first child. While walking one afternoon with her two daughters in the Khimki forest, she saw marks on the trees and later learned that regional officials had decided the forest would be chopped down. Ms Chirikova started printing petitions and soon formed a tight circle of supporters.

Land along the Khimki road project is scheduled for development. Activists say that the current route benefits officials because they can buy the land in the forest cheaply.

In November 2008, Mikhail Beketov, a local journalist who was among the first to raise the alarm over the project, was beaten so viciously that he was left brain damaged and unable to speak. Two years later, Ms Chirikova’s fellow activist Konstantin Fetisov suffered a similar beating and was also left with brain damage.

In recent years, Ms Chirikova has received numerous threats, her husband has been beaten, and authorities have threatened to take away her children.

But she insists: “Either you go out there and do it and don’t think about fear at all, or you leave the country because life is scary everywhere in Russia for anyone who holds strong views.”