A leading figure during the brief reawakening of Russian civil society that led to protests in 2011-2012, the environmentalist took her children to Estonia after the authorities threatened to seize her children.

Moscow (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Yevgenia Chirikova, one of Russia’s best known environmental activists, has fled to Estonia with her family because of "repressions against social activists in Russia," she told Estonia's public broadcasting agency ERR.

"Above all I decided to take my main weak spot — my children — out of Russia," Chirikova was quoted as saying in a report Saturday. "Russia is a country of resources, and environmentalists are the main enemy of the established regime of the natural resources oligarchy."

Between 2010 and 2011, Chirikova was among the first to organise protests against government policies and initiatives, leading the fight to save the Khimki forest, just outside Moscow, from plans to build a new highway to San Petersburg.

Her Movement to Defend Khimki Forest was backed by then unknown anti-corruption lawyer and blogger Aleksei Navalny, who became the leader of the non-parliamentary opposition in 2012.

In 2011, Russian authorities tried to take her children into state custody because of trumped-up claims of abuse. Later that year U.S. Vice President Joe Biden gave her an award for "women of courage."

In 2012, she ran for mayor of the Moscow region town of Khimki that was set to be along the highway's route. She came in second place.

Chirikova is not the first activist who left Russia because of increasing pressure after Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin.

Recently, Navalny’s lieutenant and financial backer, Vladimir Ashurkov, was granted political asylum in Britain with his family.

Chess champion Garry Kasparov preceded him in exile. As an opposition figure, he had worked with Boris Nemtsov, who was killed in late February near the Kremlin.

Sergey Ponomarev, the only Member of the State Duma to vote against the ratification of the annexation of the Crimea by the Russian Federation a year ago, is currently in the United States.

Pardoned by President Vladimir Putin, the former political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky now lives in Zurich.

Leonid Bershidsky, one of Russia's most famous columnists, writes on Russian affairs from Berlin.

Sergei Guriev, a liberal economist and former rector of the New Economic School in Moscow, who backed Navalny and slammed a possible third court case against Khodorkovsky, now teaches in Paris. (N.A.)

• russia
• opposition
• exile
• yevgenia
• chirikova