Moscow Governor Boris Gromov wants Russian leaders to take into account the letters of 20,000 Khimki residents who say that they support the construction of the highway through the Khimki forest.  The Khimki Forest Defenders’ website has been attacked by hackers, possibly in connection with ‘material about Gromov‘.  Boris Kagarlitsky calls President Dmitry Medvedev’s intervention on the issue ‘the biggest political news of the past five years […] a public slap in the face by the government to its own over-eager employees.‘  A former lawyer on the Yukos case has begun a campaign over the imprisonment of a woman found guilty of embezzlement, due to the fact that she has four young children and so could have had her sentence waived (as it was for United Russia consultant Anna Shavenkova).  The US has commented on the Moscow arrests during Tuesday’s Strategy 31 protests, emphasizing ‘the importance of embracing and protecting universal values, including freedom of expression and freedom of assembly enshrined in the Russian Constitution.‘  The global Strategy 31 protests attracted many well-known Russian faces in London (Boris Berezovsky, Yevgeny Chichvarkin, Marina Litvinenko) and New York (Pavel Khodorkovsky).