... the junction as far as Sheremetyevo Airport should be complete by the end of 2013. The plan includes widening the road on either side by adding bus lanes. The junction, where Leningradskoye Shosse crosses the ring road from Moscow into the town of Khimki, is notorious for delays and causing painful bottlenecks on the way to Sheremetyevo Airport. Planning experts have blamed the congestion on a 1970s-built cloverleaf design that is unsuited for present-day volumes of traffic. It is the first of...

... said. Kuznetsov fled the country and remains at large. Analysts said that in order to win confidence, Shoigu must sack unpopular figures. Political expert Sergei Markov, who is vice president of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, mentioned Khimki Mayor Vladimir Strelchenko, a protege of outgoing Governor Gromov, as an example. Strelchenko has been accused of corruption and repressing opponents of the construction of a Moscow-St. Petersburg highway that requires a sizable portion of Khimki...

... could not immediately be reached for comment. Other chamber members are described as "not loyal" and also treated with a certain degree of respect. Mikhail Blinkin, a transportation industry insider who campaigned against a highway through the Khimki Forest, is "dedicated," "respected" and should be "worked with." It says lawyer Yelena Lukyanova, known for her opposition views, cannot be influenced by the Kremlin and recommends that the Kremlin negotiate with her...

... Thursday on charges of disobeying police orders. He joins opposition leaders Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov, who are serving 15-day terms for their role in street demonstrations last week and are scheduled to be released May 24. Police detained Khimki forest defender Yevgenia Chirikova and several other activists on Thursday evening after she invited demonstrators on Kudrinskaya Ploshchad to a Saturday protest against construction in a forest in the Moscow region city of Zhukovsky, Chirikova...

... held. The plan, however, required cutting down 12 hectares of the forest — or 8 percent of the total — and was met with an angry response from many locals. The protesters said they were inspired by the activists who fought to save the ­Khimki Forest to the northeast of Moscow, which was cut down by federal authorities in 2010 to make way for an $8 billion expressway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg. Locals in Zhukovsky argued in favor of a different approach that would have bypassed...