Today, Khimki Forest activist Mr. Alexey Dmitriev was brutally beaten near the door of his flat. The attack took place in the morning when Alexey was waiting near the elevator to go to his job. Suddenly, he was hit on the head by unknown attackers and left by the staircase. His mobile phone was taken away.
Alexey was taken to Khimki hospital. An eyewitness from the scene of the crime, Mrs. Lyudmila Yudakova, was shocked by a large puddle of blood near his door. “I have never seen so much blood”, - she sais.
A week before the attack, Alexey led a public environmental inspection to the site of the destruction of the Klyaz’ma river for the Moscow-St. Petersburg toll motorway. He published a report about this environmental crime, committed by French Vinci and its Russian collaborators.
The title of the report was “Hell on Earth” – and the pictures there clearly illustrate this title http://a-zatvornik.livejournal.com/35114.html, http://a-zatvornik.livejournal.com/35728.html.
Evgenia Chirikova, winner of the Goldman Prize 2012 for the protection of the Khimki Forest, commented “Alexey is a very active man. He has fought against the Moscow-St. Petersburg motorway project through our forest. He has also supported the fight of local residents against many other environment-destroying projects. I am sure that this attack, as with the previous attacks against Mikhail Beketov and Konstantin Fetisov, was due to his activity in the protection of the environment. Unfortunately, those cases clearly show that attacks against environmentalists in Khimki have become a standard practice for dealing with our movement. Instead of making changes to the project in order to avoid environmental damage, those in charge use brutal force to suppress civil protests. I wish Alexey a speedy recovery and have to say, that we will boost our activities as a response to the brutal beating. I am sure that the Goldman Prize that I was awarded today will also help to draw more attention to our cause – both in Russia and abroad”.
