Daghestani Long-Haul Truckers Say Makhachkala has Not Kept Its Word

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 29 – A major reason why striking long-haul truckers in Daghestan agreed to suspend their strike last week was that the republic authorities said they would pass on the drivers’ demands to Moscow, but according to a leader of the strike there, the powers that be have not kept their promise.

            Abduraashin Samadov says that “the long-haul drivers do not have confirmation that their demands have been sent on to the State Duma” in Moscow as Makhachkala had promised, a discovery that makes the renewal of the strike in that North Caucasus republic, possibly after the end of Ramadan, far more likely (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/303394/).

            The drivers feel particularly betrayed, his comments to the Kavkaz-Uzel news portal suggest, because the governments of other republics, including most prominently Tatarstan, have in fact send on to the federal legislature the drivers’ demands.

            In the last 24 hours, there were two other developments on the long-haul truckers’ strike front: On the one hand, the Carriers Union in Sverdlovsk Oblast announced that the authorities there have approved the truckers plan for a two-to three hour strike action on the ring road of Yekaterinburg on June 3 (ura.news/news/1052291090).

            Indeed, regional union head Nail Nigamatullin said that “the Sverdlovsk authorities had approved the mobile strike action without any questions or comments.”

            And on the other hand, Kommersant reports that long-haul truckers are increasingly taking part in protests on other issues, including most prominently the one organized on Sunday by opponents of plans to demolish the five-storey khrushchoby in Moscow and shift the residents to more distant regions (kommersant.ru/doc/3311129).