Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 22 – Many commentators
are focusing on the plans of long haul truckers from Daghestan to bring their
protest to Moscow on November 30, but they have already taken a step which is
likely to be even more consequential: They have declared that a Russian
oligarch close to Vladimir Putin is “worse than ISIS.”
Yesterday, some 200 truck drivers
assembled in Khasavyurt in order to continue protests across Russia against
Moscow’s decision to raise the user fees long haul truckers must pay and to
hand over the collection of these fees to one of Putin’s friends, the oligarch
Arkady Rotenberg (chernovik.net/content/lenta-novostey/dagestanskie-dalnoboyshchiki-rotenbergi-huzhe-chem-igil).
The drivers displayed signs
declaring that “Rotenberg is worse than ISIS” and calling for “A Russia without
Rotenbergs, especially provocative declarations given how close Rotenberg is to
Putin and given that ISIS is not only legally banned in the Russian Federation
but is the subject of intense media attacks.
Not surprisingly, the drivers say
that the local militia told them that they had to disperse or face the prospect
that the authorities would send in the OMON. But their slogans have caught the
imagination of truckers and others across the Russian Federation, to judge from
an article in “Novaya gazeta” (novayagazeta.ru/society/70831.html).
Irina Gordienko, a journalist for
that Moscow paper, says that “now all Russian long haul truckers know the list
of the richest people of Russia according to Forbes and what place Arkady
Rotenberg occupies in it.” They also know that “the billionaire … is a friend
and coworker of the president” and that he stands to gain enormously from the
new fee arrangements.
She further points out that the long
haul truckers are “one of the foundations of the Russian economy as far as
consumer products are concerned.” There
are officially more than two million such trucks in the country and a large
number of them are based in its southern parts because that is where food
supplies come from.
Consequently, the disruptions the
truckers have caused – typically by forming convoys and then driving at 10 km
an hour to slow things up – are already having an impact on Russians in the cities
and more generally; and the slogans they are employing are attracting more
attention than many might expect, especially given that the Kremlin is trying
to put on lid on these stories.
“Vestnik Civitas” entitles its write
up of this story, “The Long Haul Truckers Don’t Want to Feed the Rotenbergs,”
and notes that some among Russia’s political opposition are just beginning to
pick up on this as a theme, strongly implying that in the coming weeks more are
likely to do so (vestnikcivitas.ru/news/3897).
Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia
Movement put out a statement yesterday declaring that Moscow was seeking to put
the burden for the failures of its own policies on the backs of ordinary
citizens, in this case truck drivers.
“Thousands
of people are assembling in the most various parts of the country, from
Makhachkala to the Far East in order to block the roads. Typically, the authorities call those
protesting a fifth column and accuse them of being agents of the State.” But
that doesn’t work because these are “the most ordinary Russians” who supported
the annexation of Crimea and who overwhelmingly back Putin, according to the
polls.
“These
are people,” in short the statement says, “who simply engage in difficult work
in order to feed their children.”
“But
the powers that be need to feed the Rotenbergs. And therefore they are shifting
responsibility for their own policies onto the shoulders of ordinary citizens.
These are the very people” who allowed Russia’s business elite to profit over
the last 15 years and did so by failing to do things important for the people
like building highways.
By
destroying the long haul truck business in this way, the statement says, Moscow
is promoting “the final monopolization of intra-regional markets,” something that
it suggests is “yet another step to the destruction of the already shaky unity
of our country.”
“Our
common goal,” Open Russia says, “is not to allow this, despite different
interests and different views on other issues.”
No comments:
Post a Comment