Hundreds Protest Nickel Mine In Russia, Previous Clashes Resulted in Torched Equipment

28 July 2013 VORONEZH — Hun­dreds of peo­ple gath­ered in a small town in Voronezh region on Sun­day for a new protest in their year-long cam­paign against plans to open a nick­el and cop­per mine in the area, police offi­cials said.

The demon­stra­tion was orga­nized by the local anti-mine move­ment and res­i­dents of Novokhop­er­sk who called for halt­ing the min­ing project. The ral­ly orga­niz­ers said that about 3,000 peo­ple took part in the demon­stra­tion, includ­ing those from neigh­bor­ing provinces, while the police put the num­ber at 900.

It is the first mass gath­er­ing of the cam­paign­ers after the 13-month stand­off explod­ed last month with a crowd of sev­er­al hun­dred storm­ing the premis­es of a geo­log­i­cal explo­ration par­ty and torch­ing cars, con­struc­tion trail­ers and drilling rigs.

The min­er, pri­vate­ly owned Ural Min­ing and Met­al­lur­gi­cal Com­pa­ny (UMMC), has denied that its mine would harm the envi­ron­ment.