Russian Anarchist Mob Attacks Mayor's Office Near Moscow, Kommersant Says

Five hundred Russian anti- government activists attacked the office of a Moscow suburb’s mayor to protest the construction of a highway through a forest, Kommersant reported.

The protesters gathered in central Moscow yesterday and took a commuter train to the northern suburb of Khimki, armed with air guns and baseball bats, the newspaper reported. Police fled after being pelted with rocks and bottles and nobody was arrested, Kommersant said.

The anarchist youths set off flares and tried to chop down the main door of the mayor’s office with an ax, according to Kommersant. They spray-painted “Save the Russian Forest” on the walls of the building in the five-minute flash protest, the newspaper reported.

An environmentalist camp in the Khimki forest was attacked by a group of masked men over the weekend, Kommersant said. Mikhail Beketov, the editor of a local newspaper, was almost beaten to death in 2008 after campaigning to stop construction of a highway through the Khimki forest.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lucian Kim in Moscow at lkim3@bloomberg.net

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