Construction to build a much debated highway through the Khimki Forest near Moscow will begin in March, a building company said on Thursday.
The project was given the go-ahead in December, three months after President Dmitry Medvedev put it on hold amid protests demanding to reroute the new Moscow-St. Petersburg highway.
"Builders will start working by mid-March," Avtodor deputy chair Sergei Kelbakh told RIA Novosti.
Several journalists who reported on the Khimki controversy have been attacked and badly hurt in the past.
Oleg Kashin, a journalist with Kommersant daily, was beaten with an iron rod by two unknown assailants outside his home in Moscow on November 6.
Ecologist Konstantin Fetisov was set upon by men with a baseball bat two days earlier.
In 2008, Mikhail Beketov, the former editor of a local weekly, was left brain-damaged and unable to speak in a similar attack.
MOSCOW, February 10 (RIA Novosti)
