Moscow Marks Start of Higher Plato System Fees with Arrests, but Truckers Strike Continues

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 15 – Today, Moscow introduced the new higher fees imposed by the Plato system against which Russia’s long-haul truckers have been striking and police in St. Petersburg marked the day by arresting ten of the strikers. But there is no evidence that the strike is failing or that its impact on consumer goods has been reduced (znak.com/2017-04-15/s_segodnyashnego_dnya_tarif_platona_povysili_nesmotrya_na_akcii_protestov_dalnoboychikov and fontanka.ru/2017/04/15/028/).

            Indeed, the reverse may be true given the contempt the central government has shown to the drivers by going ahead with the rate hike and the fact that the number of arrests is still small, enough to infuriate but hardly enough to dissuade many drivers, especially as decisions about arrests appear to remain decentralized (http://svpressa.ru/society/article/170507/).

           Subsequent reporting suggests that in Daghestan, the authorities have begun a far larger crackdown, including widespread arrests, in what has been one of the most active centers of the strike and where the drivers have already articulated political demands against the increasingly unpopular and isolated republic leadership (youtube.com/watch?v=U4WNJ2-LFJY&feature=share).