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The environmental activists camped out in the Khimki Forest near Moscow have become a national symbol of resistance to corrupt authority. For the last four years, they have been trying to prevent a highway being built straight through the last old-growth oak forest in the Moscow region. The group has attracted some of Russia's best-known cultural figures to the cause. Meanwhile, a new term has been coined in Russian, to defend something "like the Khimki Forest." It means to stand your ground until the very end.

© 2011 Platon for Human Rights Watch