Plato Strikes Again: Russian Trucker Mikhail Vedrov Charged with Assaulting Police Officer

Criminal Charges Filed in Tver Against Man Involved in Anti-Plato Road Tolls Protest
Vlad Yanyushkin
OVD Info
September 23, 2020

In Tver, criminal charges have been filed against trucker Mikhail Vedrov, who was involved in a protest against the Plato road tolls system. Vedrov is accused of violence against an official (punishable under Article 318.1 of the criminal code). According to investigators, he slapped a traffic police officer. The court has placed Vedrov under house arrest. Officials attempted to prevent Vedrov’s lawyer and members of the public from attending the court hearing, and several people were detained.

On September 10 and 11, the Association of Russian Carriers (OPR) held a two-day protest in Tver against the Plato system. As the organization’s chairman Sergei Vladimirov told OVD Info, thirty-seven people from seventeen regions took part in the protest. Truckers called for abolishing the transport tax and making government spending on the transport industry more transparent. Drivers also held a founding congress to establish their own trade union.

On September 10, the protesters stopped outside the Plato data processing center on Red Navy Street. They expected Plato management to negotiate with them, but no one came out of the building. Instead, the police and the Russian National Guard came to meet them. Three regional OPR coordinators were detained for having posters on their cars featuring anti-Plato slogans. They were taken to Tver’s central police precinct, but soon released since the maximum time for keeping [people suspected of administrative violations, i.e., three hours] in police custody was exceeded. The protesters were given an undertaking to report again to the precinct to be formally charged with violating the rules for mass events (punishable under Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code), but the truckers failed to produce themselves at the precinct.

The second day of the protests on September 11 came off quietly. In the evening, as the truckers were leaving Tver, they were stopped by a traffic police patrol. Senior Lieutenant Sergei Nikishin asked Sergei Ryabintsev, who was behind the wheel, for his papers.

The entire convoy of truckers stopped, including OPR member Mikhail Vedrov from North Ossetia. According to investigators, “exhibiting direct criminal intent,” Vedrov approached the traffic policeman and, “realizing the public danger and illegality of his actions,” “struck at least one blow” to the officer’s neck. Thus, according to the formal written charges, the trucker caused the police officer physical pain and bruising of soft tissues in the neck.

Trucker Sergei Rudametkin provided OVD Info with an audio recording of a conversation with Ryabintsev, in which the trucker says that law enforcement stopped the convoy as it was leaving Tver. One of the officers asked to see the drivers’ papers. In response to a question about the grounds for this procedure, the police officer began yelling at everyone. At some point, the officer started shouting at Vedrov as well. Consequently, Vedrov was detained and accused of assaulting the police officer.

“There is nothing but the testimony of the victim [the police officer] and the testimony of the victim’s partner. Everything is based on the testimony of two police officers,” explains OVD Info lawyer Sergei Telnov. He added that Vedrov had invoked Article 51 of the Russian Constitution [which protects people from self-incrimination], so the defense lawyer did not have the right to answer some of our questions, for example, why Vedrov appears as if from nowhere in the police’s version of events, and whether he was in the car with Ryabintsev when the conflict with the police officer erupted.

Vedrov was taken to the central police precinct in Tver. Petersburg human rights activist Dinar Idrisov told OVD Info that over the course of the evening, the police investigator tried to pressure Vedrov to sign a confession, despite the lack of evidence. Around two o’clock in the morning, Vedrov was released under an obligation to appear before the investigator on September 14.

On the appointed day, Vedrov, accompanied by Telnov, reported to the Investigative Committee for questioning as subpoenaed. After a conversation with the investigator, they were given a summons for questioning, scheduled for the next day. On September 15, Vedrov was already interrogated as a suspect in a criminal case of violence against authorities. He was taken into custody.

Two days later, at Vedrov’s custody hearing, the bailiffs refused to let members of the public into the courtroom. Telnov explained that the official pretext was combating the spread of the coronavirus. Exceptions were made for one journalist and Vedrov’s wife and children, who had flown from North Ossetia for the hearing.

Telnov also had problems entering the courthouse.

“I got in the first time without no problems,” Telnov says. “Just before the hearing started, I went outside to talk, but when I tried to go back in they tried to stop me.”

According to Telnov, the bailiffs illegally demanded that he lay out the entire contents of his bag. When he tried to enter again, the bailiffs yielded.

Around four o’clock the judge retired to chambers to deliberate. It was then that Sergei Belyaev, editor of the Telegram channel I’m a Citizen! was detained and charged with failing to comply with the orders of a court bailiff (punishable under Article 17.3.2 of the Administrative Code) for recording video in the courthouse without permission from the presiding judge. The journalist was released after the arrest sheet was drawn up.

At the same time, OPR chair Sergei Vladimirov, who had come to support Vedrov, was detained in the courtyard in front of the court building. He was roughly shoved into a police car and taken to the Tver interior ministry directorate, where he was charged with disobeying the commands of a police officer (punishable under Article 19.3 of the Administrative Code) and left overnight in custody pending trial. He was released the next day.

Returning from chambers, the judge placed Vedrov under house arrest for two months, ignoring the prosecution’s request to remand the trucker in custody at a pretrial detention center. The prosecutor had argued that Vedrov could take flight, influence witnesses, and hinder the criminal proceedings.

Telnov explained in court that his client was unlikely to be able pressure the witnesses, since they were all police officers. Nor would he be able to destroy the evidence, since the whole case was based on the testimony of witnesses at the scene.

Photo of Mikhail Vedrov courtesy of the Association of Russian Carriers (OPR) and OVD Info. Translated by the Russian Reader. I have published numerous articles over the past several years about the inspiring militancy of Russian truckers.

Plato Is Invincible, or, The Fix Is In for RTITS

Russian Government Could Pay for Protests Against Plato Road Tolls System
Olga Adamchuk
Vedomosti
January 8, 2019

“No to Rotenberg’s extortion” read stickers on long-haul trucks in early 2017, when highways were blocked [sic] in protest against the introduction of the Plato road tolls system. An agreement that would establish an automated weight-and-size monitoring system on federal highways, fining overweight trucks, would protect its likely operator, RT Invest Transport Systems (RTITS) from problems associated with such manifestations of dissent.

Currently, RTITS is 23.5% owned by Igor Rotenberg [son of Putin crony Arkady Rotenberg], 50% by RT Invest, 19% by Andrei Shipelov, and 7.5% by Anton Zamkov.

If there are rallies, demonstrations, meetings, and marches near the automated weight-and-size monitoring points, even if these events were authorized, and they hindered the construction or operation of the Plato system, incurring extra costs to the operator, the Russian government would be obliged to compensate the operator for these expenses, according to a draft concessionary agreement, published December 28 on the official Russian government bidding information website torgi.gov.ru. The operator would be able to bill the government not only for actually incurred losses but also for expected losses.

The government will wait for other bids until February 12. If other bids are submitted, there will be a tender for the contract. If there are no bids, the agreement will be signed on the current terms.

However, downtime in the operation of the scales will have no effect on the operator’s revenues, which will be supplied not by Russian truckers, but by the Russian government. For installing and maintaining the system, the operator will be paid 8.64 billion rubles annually [approx. $129 million] (VAT not included) over eleven and a half years. The government will shell out a total of 118.45 billion rubles [approx. $1.7 billion] (VAT included) to the system’s operator. The concessionaire would pay fines for the glitches for which it was responsible. An appendix to the agreement stipulates the system must identify three quarters of violators.

The agreement features a long list of special circumstances in which the operator can demand additional payments from the government, including when inflation is twice as high as was expected, and if the project goes over budget by ten percent or more.

The government would also permit the system’s operator to use the property it builds and installs, which remains state property, for any purpose, including commercial ends.

A concession deals insider notes this stipulation has usually not been part of projects in which the grantor made payments to the concessionaire, since, if there were an opportunity to earn money, it should reduce the fee paid by the grantor. The agreement also lacks the routine stipulation that key subcontractors must be approved by the grantor. Our source wondered why the government was thus willing to forfeit oversight of the project. If the concessionaire had managed to obtain cheap financing, the government could reduce its fee: the state and investors would usually share benefits equally, but there is nothing of the sort in the proposed agreement.

Currently, there are 28 weight-and-size monitoring points operating on Russian federal highways. After the new system has been completely installed, in 2024, there will be 387 automated weigh stations. Under the terms of the project application, eighty-eight of these weigh stations will be built by way of improving the current Plato road toll system, the Russian Transport Ministry has reported.

Investors are also protected in case the agreement is terminated. The Russian government shoulders a greater payout to the concessionaire than it would in similar agreements, said Sergei Luzan, director of PricewaterhouseCoopers Russia (PwC Russia). Even if the project never gets off the ground, the concessionaire can incur two billion rubles in expenses and have them repaid by the Russian government. Such conditions are possible in concessions, but the government usually only pays costs that have been itemized and authorized in advance, and at a discounted rate, Luzan said.

In 2017, protesters demanded the government terminate the concession agreement for the Plato road toll payment system. Andrei Bazhutin, [chair of the Association of Russian Carriers or OPR], said truckers were planning to protest the launch of the weight-and-size monitoring system as early as February. According to Bazhutin, Russia’s independent truckers had been engaged in serious discussions.

Alexander Kotov, chair of the Truck Drivers Trade Union, also confirmed discussions were underway, but he refused to say when protests could begin. He said carriers would like to see shippers bear the cost for overloaded vehicles.

Having to pay for an overloaded vehicle that travels through several weigh stations could simply ruin a small trucking company, but it would also go bust if it refused to dispatch the overweight vehicle, explained the head of a major logistics company, because the shipper would hire another carrier.

As cited by the Transport Ministry, the RADOR Association (a national organization of local road authorities) has claimed that overloaded trucks cause 2.6 trillion rubles in damage to highways annually. According to statistics, there are no longer any problems with federal highways, since they are in between scheduled overhauls. But the president has ordered an overhaul of regional roads, which are still in a state of chaos.

The truckers and spokespeople of truckers associations surveyed by Vedomosti were unhappy with the current weigh stations. Bazhutin said that, compared with the Plato system, the weight-and-size monitoring system still had numerous shortcomings, for example, the fact that weather conditions had a huge impact on the accuracy of scales. He also noted that drivers do not see whether they are running overweight when they drive over the scales, and so when they receive a fine of between 100,000 rubles and 500,000 rubles [$1,500 to $7,500] in the mail, it is a complete surprise to them. If a trucker fails to pay the fine, his or her account is blocked.

“It’s just like with Plato. It doesn’t matter whether you were running empty or loaded. You have to pay whether you were overweight or not, since the system registered a violation. It’s impossible to dispute a fine. Since this whole business puts pressure on self-employed carriers, there will likely be protest rallies and marches,” said Bazhutin. “But we’re unlikely to set up a protest camp next to a weight station in Yaroslavl Region, say, when it is the federal authorities who are making the decision.”

Kotov argued that, since the bulk of cargo in Russia is shipped by trucks, this new financial burden would ultimately be passed on to consumers.

Political scientist Abbas Gallyamov argued the state of public opinion is currently such that things could kick off anywhere whatsoever. Any action by the authorities that is deemed unjust is capable of setting off a wave of protests. Gallyamov notes that Russian truckers have demonstrated their willingness to fight back and their capacity for coordination; moreover, they did so in circumstances in which public opinion was generally much more inclined to side with the regime. Given this past history, the chances of Russian truckers rising in protest again were great, he concluded.

Spokespeople for the Transport Ministry and RTITS told that the terms of the agreement were standard.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo courtesy of dangerousroads

Unionized Independent Russian Truckers Persecuted by Putin Regime

Opponents of Plato Road Tolls System Complain to European Court of Human Rights They Have Been Victims of Political Persecution
Their Organization Was Earlier Ruled a “Foreign Agent”
Anastasia Kornya
Vedomosti
December 26, 2018

The Association of Russian Carriers (OPR), an organization of independent truck drivers the Russian Justice Ministry placed on its list of “foreign agents” late last year, has filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) in Strasbourg, claiming its right to freedom of association had been violated and it had been subjected to political persecution, in violation of Article 11 and Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as reported by Alexei Glukhov, a lawyer with the Agora International Human Rights Group who represents the OPR in Strasbourg.

The OPR emerged during the campaign for the rights of truckers that kicked off after the Plato road tolls payment system went online in November 2015. The OPR brought together independent truck owners and truck drivers. In June 2017, it announced it was planning to nominate its chair, Andrei Bazhutin, as a candidate for the Russian presidency. Shortly thereafter, the Justice Ministry launched an audit of the OPR, resulting in its being ruled a “foreign agent.” The ministry cited four donations from private individuals in Germany, totaling 3,620 euros, as evidence of “foreign financing.”

In a report on its oversight of the work of “foreign agent” NGOs in 2017, the Justice Ministry claimed the OPR had engaged in “political activity” by “organizing and holding events calling for the resignation of the Russian federal government.” In June of this year, the Krasnogvardeisky District Court in Petersburg fined the OPR 400,000 rubles [approx. $5,755] for failing to voluntarily [sic] register itself as a “foreign agent.”

The complaint says the OPR has been a nuisance to the Putin regime since the organization has led the campaign against the Plato road tolls payment system, which ultimately benefits businessmen closely allied with the Kremlin. The truckers are certain it was their grassroots activism that caused the authorities to persecute them. The fine leveled against the OPR not only was far in excess of the foreign donations it received but has also financially ruined the organization.

Glukhov points out the ECHR has received several dozen complaints from Russian NGOs labeled “foreign agents” by the Russian government, but the court has not yet ruled on Russia’s “foreign agent” law and its application in practice. However, the court has communicated the facts of the first large group of cases to the Russian authorities, while a second group of cases was nearing completion, meaning that a ruling on complaints filed by Russian “foreign agent” NGOs could be expected next year, argues Glukhov. The OPR’s complaint is part of a third wave of complaints filed in Strasbourg. As they await the court’s ruling, Russian NGOs continue to suffer from the harsh law.

Everyone has the right to complain to the EHCR, but the Russian Justice Ministry begins to work with a complaint [sic] only after the court has communicated its consent to hear the case, says Andrei Fyodorov, head of the office of Russia’s representative to the EHCR.

Lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky says the EHCR has rarely ruled that Article 18 of the European Convention has been violated. Recently, however, in response to a complaint filed by opposition politician Alexei Navalny, the court ruled Russia had violated Article 18. The ruling was a precedent of sorts. Agranovsky has the sense that, before the Navalny case, the court’s Grand Chamber had postponed other cases in which Article 18 had been invoked, but now it had worked out a common set of rules that could be applied in other cases as well. On the other hand, there was a risk Article 18 would be devalued, Agranovsky warns [sic].

______________________

[Three] Years of Plato: How Russian Authorities Forced Truckers to Pay Road Tolls

[Three] years ago, on November 15, 2015, Russian authorities launched the Plato system (“Plato” is an acronym for “payment for a ton” in Russian) to collect tolls from owners of heavy-duty trucks traveling on federal highways. The authorities claimed their goal was to compensate for the damage the trucks caused to roads. It was decided the toll would be applied to owners of trucks weighing over twelve tons. Photo courtesy of Maxim Stulov/Vedomosti and RBC

fullscreen-12pm The right to develop and implement Plato was awarded to RT Invest Transport Systems without tendering. The company is owned on a parity basis by Igor Rotenberg and RT Invest, which is 25.01% owned by Rostec and 74.99% owned by Andrei Shipelov’s firm Tsaritsyn Capital LLC. The Russian government agreed to pay Plato’s developer and operator 10.6 billion rubles [approx. $153 million at current exchange rates] annually. Photo of Igor Rotenberg courtesy of Nikolai Galkin/TASS and RBC

Opposition politician Alexei Navalny and Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) lawyer Ivan Zhdanov asked that the courts declare the government’s agreement with RT Invest Transport Systems null and void. Their lawsuit was rejected first by the Moscow Court of Arbitration, and later by the Russian Constitutional Court. Photo of Alexei Navalny courtesy of Yevgeny Razumny/Vedomosti and RBC

fullscreen-12do Truckers in forty Russian regions protested against Plato in November 2016. They demanded Plato be turned off, a three-year moratorium imposed on its use, and the system be tested for at least a year. Photo by Yevgeny Yegorov/Vedomosti and RBC

fullscreen-12su When Plato was launched in November 2015, truck drivers paid 1.53 rubles a kilometer. Four months later, the authorities planned to double the toll, but after negotiations with truckers they made concessions, reducing the toll increase to 25%. Since April 15, 2017, the authorities have charged trucks 1.91 rubles a kilometer. Photo courtesy of Sergei Nikolayev/Vedomosti and RBC

fullscreen-12d8 However, even the discounted [sic] toll increase did not sit well with all truckers [sic]. On March 27, 2016, the OPR went on what it called an indefinite nationwide strike. Truckers protested the toll increases and demanded fairness and transparency at weight stations. Photo by Yevgeny Razumny/Vedomosti and RBC. [The slogans read, “Down with Plato!!! It’s Rotenberg’s Feeding Trough” and “We’re Against Toll Roads.”]

fullscreen-12jx In October 2017, the government approved a bill increasing fines for nonpayment of Plato tolls from 5,000 rubles to 20,000 rubles. If passed, the law would make it possible to charge drivers for violations that occurred six months earlier. The new rules were set to take effect in 2018. Photo of Dmitry Medvedev courtesy of Dmitry Astakhov/TASS and RBC

fullscreen-1ghb Plato’s database has registered 921,000 vehicles weighing over twelve tons. According to the Russian Transport Ministry, during its first two years of operation, Plato raised 37 billion rubles for the Federal Roads Fund. In the autumn of 2017, the government selected three projects that would be financed by the monies raised by Plato: a fourth bridge in Novosibirsk and bypasses around the cities of Chusovoy (Perm Territory) and Khabarovsky. Photo courtesy of Georgy Shpikalov/PhotoXPress and RBC

Vehicles that transport people are exempt from Plato tolls, as are emergency vehicles, including vehicles used by firefighters, police, ambulance services, emergency services, and the military traffic police. Vehicles used to transport military equipment are also exempt from the toll. Photo courtesy of Gleb Garanich/Reuters and RBC

Russian Trucking News

“Delivery for a favorite client.” A short-haul freight truck in downtown Petersburg, August 8, 2018. Photo by the Russian Reader

Officials Want to Equip New Trucks with Special Sensors as of 2024
Carriers Are Worried Tightening Monitoring Weight and Size of Trucks Will Increase Load on Business
Elizaveta Bazanova and Vladimir Shtanov
Vedomosti
December 24, 2018

Officials have concocted a new way to monitor business. They want to equip trucks with axial-load sensors in order to combat trucks hauling loads in excess of legal weights. Legislation requiring such loads be transported by trucks weighing over 3.5 tons will be drafted by 2024. The plan is contained in the outline of the Russian government’s national Safe and High-Quality Highways project, two federal officials told Vedomosti. A spokesperson for Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov said the project’s outline would be approved by the cabinet on Monday.

The Industry and Trade Ministry and the Transportation Ministry would have until 2022 to draft amendments to the technical regulations of the Eurasian Customs Union (EACU), forbidding the import to Russia of trucks not equipped with the sensors. The amendments should also be inserted into Russian technical regulations before 2024, according to the national highway project’s outline. (Vedomosti has seen part of this document.) As of 2024, all new trucks will have to be equipped by manufacturers with the sensors, explained Akimov’s spokesperson. Owners of old trucks will not be forced to install them. They will have the option of installing them, says a source who has learned about the plans from a federal official.

Regulations on equipping all Russian trucks weighing more than 3.5 tons with axial-load sensors have not yet been drafted, according to spokespeople at the Transport Ministry and Rosavtodor (Russian Federal Road Agency).

Russian authorities set about establishing weight-and-size monitoring system for freight trucks in 2016. Their goal is to maintain the quality of roads and reduce the number of accidents. Automatic scales that measure the axial load of trucks have been installed on highways in test regions. If a truck is overweight, the carrier must pay a fine of up to 450,000 rubles [approx. 5,800 euros]. A total of twenty-seven checkpoints in eighteen Russian regions have been set up on federal highways. By 2024, the number of checkpoints should rise to 387, covering federal and regional highways in seventy-five regions.

The pilot program in Vologda Region has shown the average overload is thirty percent, the Transport Ministry reported. During their first year of operation, the checkpoints reduced the number of violators from forty percent to four percent. On the federal level, the weight-and-size monitoring system will be a public-private partnership. RT Invest Transport Systems, owned by Igor Rotenberg, son of Arkady Rotenberg, and RT Invest, jointly owned by Rostec and Andrei Shipelov, has shown interest in acquiring an operating license. In June 2018, the company proposed a public-private partnership with the government.

The regions will establish their own public-private partnerships. Truck owners will be able to purchase the sensors from any manufacturer. No directives will be issued on this score, a federal official assured us.

3.74 million trucks were registered in Russia as of July 1, reports Autostat. Under the European classification, trucks weighing between 3.5 tons to 12 tons are categorized as N2. Such trucks are manufactured by KAMAZ, Iveco, Mercedes-Benz, and Renault (Midlum), among other companies. They are usually employed for short hauls, for example, from a distribution center to retail outlets, a logistics manager from a company in the consumer sector told us.

Currently, truck owners rarely install the sensors, said Boris Rybak, director general of Infomost, because equipping a truck costs owners between several tens of thousands to several hundreds of thousands of rubles. Trucks manufactured in the west that carry goods in Russia usually have the sensors pre-installed.

Alexander Lashkevich, director for relations with industrial and infrastructure organizations at the Business Lines Group, said they did not install additional sensors, since they are a standard feature on most imported vehicles, but this applies to trucks with a capacity of more than 12 tons. The new K5 line of trucks from KAMAZ features axial-load sensors as a standard feature, said a company spokesperson. Lashkevich said Business Lines used special calculators that facilitate loading semitrailers so as to avoid overloading.

Introducing weight and size monitoring will help maintain roads, but it is not clear why small-tonnage vehicles need to be equipped with axial-load sensors. Problems with overloaded axles happen to heavy haul vehicles. Ultimately, the load on the shipping business will grow, while the expediency of the planned measures is difficult to assess, warned Lashkevich.

The sensors are not needed on low-tonnage trucks. Problems with excess weight “occur extremely rarely due to the specifics of moving people’s things to new residences,” explained Arkady Usachov, director general of Gentle Move, a moving company.

The damage to roads caused by trucks weighing under 12 tons is considerably less, said Rybak, but equipping even light trucks with the sensors is a worldwide trend: you can load even a 3.5 ton truck with up to ten tons of freight. Such systems are in operation on roads in many countries, agreed Mikhail Blinkin, director of the Institute of Transport Economics and Transport Policy Studies at the Higher School of Economics.

The cost of buying and operating trucks could increase, warned Usachov.

“Freight haulage should be getting cheaper, but this approach will only make it more expensive,” argued Alexander Prokofiev, head of operations at the Moving Center. “Plato, ERA-GLONASS, and other systems will not provide real security, and they will not improve road quality. The amount of freight hauled on the roads will not decrease. Roads have to be built well from the get-go.”

Translated by the Russian Reader

Taxi

Elena Rykovtseva
Facebook
March 19, 2018

I was riding tonight in a taxi driven by someone with a surprising name: Nasimjon. I was watching Solovyov’s show on my telephone. His guests were voicing the warmest feelings of devotion to the winner of the race.
“He got so many votes not because he had the administrative resource behind him, but because people love and respect him,” said Andrei Maximov, presenter of the program Duty Officer for the Country.
My [sic] Nasimjon was silently listening to this splendor with me. At some point, moved by the emotions of the people speaking, he voiced his own.
“I was so scared today.”
“What was wrong?”
“I typed the question, ‘How much did Putin get in Moscow?’ into Yandex. The answer I got was eleven percent for him, and seventy-three percent for Grudinin. I was frightened.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Because the situation in the world is such that where would be without Putin? Look what’s going on around us: England and America again. Who else can deal with them?”
“Why do we need to deal with America?”
“They dream of ripping us to shreds. They kill everybody. They occupy everybody and kill them.”
“Who have they killed?”
“Iraq, Afghanistan. They organized the coup in Ukraine.”
“Did you hear that on TV?”
“No, my passengers told me. Plus, the Americans think everyone else is stupid.”
“Who told you that?”
“My Armenian friend. He’s lived in America for twenty years. He says that in the textbooks over there it’s written that Americans are smart, and everyone else is stupid. But Putin has made everyone fear us.”
“That’s a good thing?”
“It is.”
“Maybe it would be better if we were respected and liked?”
“It doesn’t work that way with the Americans. We have to make them fear us.”
“So, how did this thing with Putin end? You believed the figures were real?”
“Yes, I did, and that’s why I got scared. But then I turned on Business FM Radio, and it turned out it was the other way around, that Putin had seventy-three percent, and Grudinin, eleven percent. So now everything here is going to be fine.”
“What’s going to be fine?”
“Putin’s friends have already had their fill of stealing. If new guys had come to power, it would have started all over again.”
Ugh.

The author is a presenter on Radio Svoboda, the Russian-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo of the cast of Taxi courtesy of Asian Image

P.S. “What the taxi driver told me” has long been a common genre in Russian social media, especially the Russophone segment of Facebook. In most such stories, whether true or fabricated, the taxi driver is a stand-in for (debased) popular wisdom, for the Russian folk (russkii narod), meaning “ordinary,” “rank-and-file” Russians, whom the Russian liberal intelligentsia have historically imagined as a benighted, homogeneous mass.

The twist in this particular variation on the yarn is that the taxi driver’s name, Nasimjon, indicates he is clearly not ethnically Russian, meaning he hales from the Caucasus or Central Asia, or he was born in Moscow, but his parents moved there from one or other of these regions.

Even with this “politically correct” update, the genre remains problematic. It is more a symptom of the liberal intelligentsia’s failure to account for its own role in generating and maintaining the successive tyrannies that have plagued Russia since the nineteenth century, when the intelligentsia per se could be said to have been born as a kind of social subclass or metaclass, than it is a window onto the world of the “common people.”

To put it less murkily, if you stop talking to “taxi drivers” and listen to what actual Russians of all shapes, sizes, colors, and classes have to say and find out how they have either adapted to the Putinist tyranny or resisted it, you are as likely to discover resistance and clear thinking among supposed members of the Russian folk, among the people whom liberal Russians contemptuously refer to as “philistines” (obyvateli), as you would among the self-identified liberal intelligentsia.

Over the last several years, this website has featured many such inspiring stories of grassroots, working-class and lower middle-class resistance to the current Russian despotism, including the saga of the country’s fiercely militant independent truckers and the tale of the so-called partisans of Suna, a group of pensioners in Karelia who camped out in their beloved local old-growth forest to protect it, its environment, and their own humble livelihoods from local officials and developers, who wanted to build a road through it and turn part of it into a sand quarry.

Of course, there have also been many tales of similarly fierce, thoughtful resistance by Russians who by virtue of their educations and professions could be classified as intelligentsia. It is just that the vast majority of such intelligenstia militants are too clear sighted to sink to the vulgar sociology and flagrant mythologeme that would blame uneducated, poor, downtrodden, disempowered, and mostly invisible Russians for the country’s problems and Putin’s long-lived and wholly engineered “popularity.” TRR

How to Shut Down an Independent Trade Union in Russia

How to Shut Down an Independent Trade Union
The reason for the rapid dissolution of Alexei Etmanov’s union was a complaint about what it does: defending the rights of workers
Pavel Aptekar
Vedomosti
January 12, 2018

The St. Petersburg City Court’s decision to dissolve the Interregional Trade Union Workers Association (MPRA) at the request of the prosecutor’s office has not yet come into force. But the case itself clearly illustrates the current regime’s suspicious attitude towards independent trade unions that do not restrict their activities to handing out discounted holiday packages and tickets to children’s New Year’s celebrations.

MPRA was registered in February 2007. Its core consisted of the trade union of autoworkers at the Ford plant in the Petersburg suburb of Vsevolozhsk, famous for its pay rise demands and defense of workers’ rights. The emergence of a trade union that vigorously and effectively defended workers at foreign-owned plants was no accident. There is no legacy at such plants of servile, Soviet-era trade unions, which were once part of the management machine. Foreign companies have been forced to deal with the right of workers to go on strike and other means of self-defense against overtime and layoffs.

According to MPRA chair Alexei Etmanov, his career as a trade union activist kicked off randomly, in part. In 2001, soon after the Ford plant went on line, as one of the leaders of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR) local at the plant, Etmanov was invited to a congress of Ford trade union workers in North and South America. According to Etmanov, it was then he realized a real trade union not only handed out benefits and formally coordinated management’s decisions but also consistently defended the rights of employees from groundless redundancies, unpaid overtime, and other forms of managerial tyranny.

MPRA never concealed its membership in the IndustriALL Global Union, which has fifty million members in 140 countries worldwide, nor did its activities previously trouble the Russian authorities. MPRA’s troubles began after a pro-regime blogger, who saw signs of political activity in the trade union’s work and accused it of hiding its status as a “foreign agent,” filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office. The complaint led to an audit, and later, in December 2017, the prosecutor’s office filed suit with the court, asking it to dissolve MPRA.

The prosecutor’s key claim against MPRA (Vedomosti has obtained a copy of the lawsuit) was that it received financing from abroad and had not registered as a “foreign agent.” MPRA’s crusade to amend labor laws and its solidarity with protests by Russian truckers against the introduction of the Plato road tolls system in 2015—the ordinary work of a normal trade union in a country with a market economy—have been depicted as “political activity” by the prosecutor’s office. The lawsuit also includes claims that appear to be pettifogging, in particular, that MPRA incorrectly listed its official address, that it originally registered in a manner not stipulated by law, and so on.

Yet the lawsuit does not contain any mention of demands by the prosecutor’s office to eliminate the shortcomings it has, allegedly, identified. For example, in 2015, after such demands were voiced and corresponding changes made, the Supreme Court dismissed the Justice Ministry’s suit asking that Memorial be dissolved. In Petersburg, the prosecutor petitioned the court to dissolve the trade union, no more, no less. According to Yulia Ostrovskaya, a lawyer at the Center for Social and Labor Rights, this is excessive punishment. The judgment for the plaintiff is tantamount to calling into question Russia’s observance of the International Labour Organization’s Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize, signed by the Soviet Union in 1956. The convention’s third article guarantees the right of workers and employers to draw up their own constitutions and rules, freely elect their representatives, and formulate their own programs, while the fourth article states that professional organizations shall not be liable to be dissolved or suspended by administrative authority.

The circumstances reflect the regime’s growing suspicion toward independent trade unions that have not joined the Russian People’s Front (the FNPR joined the Front in 2011, for example) and insist on defending the rights of workers, notes Pavel Kudyukin, a council member at the Confederation of Labor of Russia. Authorities in some regions have accused the MPRA that they scare away investors, while courts have ruled that IndustriALL’s brochures are “extremist.” If, however, the Petersburg court’s decision is upheld by the Russian Supreme Court, it would be a terrible precedent, argues Kudyukin. All trade unions could declared “foreign agents,” include pro-regime trade unions, since many of them of belong to international trade union associations, from which they receive funding for training activists and making trips abroad.

Labor protests in Russia in terms of percentages of those involved, 2008–first half of 2017. Red = spontaneous; pink = trade union locals; dark blue = national trade unions; gray = workers’ committees; light blue = political parties and grassroots organizations; pale blue = other. The percentage may exceed 100% if several actors were involved in the same protest. Courtesy of the Center for Social and Labor Rights

As Protests Increase, National Guard Ready to Crack Down

dimon balet — “Dimon, what’s with the ballet?” Anti-corruption protesters on the Field of Mars in Petersburg. Photo courtesy of Sergei Nikolayev/DP

Experts Speak of Sharp Increase in Number of Protests in Russia
Delovoi Peterburg
November 7, 2017

According to a report by the Center for Economic and Political Reform (CEPF), the number of social and political protests in Russia has risen sharply compared to the beginning of the year.

The number of protests has been continuously growing in Russia throughout the year. In the first quarter, 284 protests were recorded; in the second quarter, 378; and in the third quarter, 445. Thus, as noted in the report, the overall number of protests has increased by almost 60% since the beginning of the year.

The analysts at the CEPF divide protests into political protests, socio-economic protests, and labor protests. They note that around 70% of protests had to do with socio-economic issues, including protests by Russian truckers against the Plato road tolls system, and protests by Russian farmers against the seizure of land by agroholdings, as well as protests by hoodwinked investors in unbuilt cooperative apartment buildings.

Political protests came in second place, including protests by supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. A total of 106 political protests were recorded in the third quarter of 2017. There were 27 labor protests in the third quarter.

The number of conflicts related to labor relations has also steadily climbed throughout the year. The number of protests caused by cases of late payment and non-payment of wages, for example, has grown as follows: 142 in the first quarter, 196 in the second quarter, and 447 in the third quarter. Thus, by the third quarter, the number of such incidents had more than tripled.

The authors of the CEPR report cites figures provided by Rosstat, according to which the amount of unpaid back wages in Russia totaled 3.38 billion rubles [approx. 49 million euros] as of October 1, 2017. The number of incidents of late payment and non-payment of wages in the third quarter of 2017 (447 companies) was more than triple the number of such incidents in the first quarter (147 companies), and more than double the number in the second quarter (196 companies).

The analysts point out that Russia has not yet put in place a system for preventing and constructively solving social conflicts, and thus protests are still nearly the only effective means for employees to defend their rights.

“We should generally expect the high number of protests nationwide to continue, especially in the socio-economic realm. This is due to the fact the problems people (hoodwinked investors, truckers, farmers, opponents of construction projects, environmental activists et al.) have been currently protesting have not been solved. At the same time, evolution of the protest movement has been greatly hampered by the lack of capable political parties, grassroots organizations, and trade unions,” write CEPR’s analysts.

Translated by the Russian Reader

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Ahead Of Election, Putin Seeks Wider Mandate For Russian National Guard
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
November 6, 2017

0327929D-DFC1-4E65-BD89-EC9685C0B625_cx0_cy8_cw0_w1023_r1_s Russian President Vladimir Putin (second right) and National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov (third left) take part in a ceremony marking National Guard Day in Moscow on March 27. Photo courtesy of Mikhail Klimentyev/TASS

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed legislation to widen the responsibility of the National Guard, an entity created last year and headed by Putin’s former chief bodyguard, to include protecting regional governors.

The bill was published on the website of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, on November 6.

The Duma is dominated by the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party and supports almost all Kremlin initiatives.

The proposed change could enhance Putin’s ability to crack down on dissent or seek to impose order if there is unrest in Russia’s far-flung regions.

The National Guard reports directly to the president. Its director, Viktor Zolotov, was chief of the presidential security service from 2000 to 2013.

The initiative comes months before a March 18 election in which Putin is expected to seek and secure a new six-year term.

Putin will be barred from seeking reelection in 2024 if he does win a fourth presidential term in the March vote, raising questions about how Russian politics will play out in the coming years and how he will maintain his grip.

Putin established the National Guard (Rosgvardia) in 2016 on the basis of the Interior Ministry troops and other security forces.

Its stated tasks initially included preserving “social order,” fighting against terrorism and extremism, and guarding state facilities.

The National Guard announced that it will be also responsible for a fingerprints database, issuing weapons-possession licenses, averting “threats to state order,” and protecting information security.

How a Petersburger Trucker Has Decided to Sue Plato

How a Petersburger Trucker Has Decided to Sue Plato
Venera Galeyeva
Fontanka.ru
October 16, 2017

After getting his first fine for non-payment of fees under the Plato road tolls system, a Petersburg trucker has challenged it in court. The case could become an important precedent.

Центр обслуживания пользователей "Платон". — Truckers gathered outside Plato’s central office. Courtesy of *Fontanka.ru*

Individual entrepreneur Yuri Bubnov has two freight trucks, one of which is on the road, a MAN-produced box truck he uses to deliver consumer goods to Moscow and Vladimir. As a matter of principle, he has not registered the truck with the Plato road tolls system, has not put a transponder on the truck, and does not pay the new Plato fees. In 2015, he was one of the few people who took part in a road rally of truckers from Petersburg to Moscow. His runs take him past Plato sensors outside Tosno and in Tver, Klin, and Novgorod Region.

A sensor mounted on the Pokrov–Elektrogorsk segment of the M7 Federal Highway finally reacted to Bubnov’s truck on September 28. On October 6, the traffic police issued Bubnov a fine of 5,000 rubles for failure to pay his Plato road toll fees. Ironically, the very same day, the Russian government approved a fourfold increase in fines for non-payers. On October 14, Bubnov sent a letter to the Odintsovo City Court in Moscow Region challenging the decision to issue the fine and petitioning the court to move the venue for hearing the case to the Kalinin District Court in Petersburg, the plaintiff’s place of residence. The truck is registered in Bubnov’s wife’s name, so she will be acting as a defender in the case: “I consider the ruling in the administrative case unfounded and illegal, which I shall prove during the trial.” Yet Bubnov could pay a discounted fine of 2,500 rubles by October 26 and live peacefully.

Truckers have tried before to challenge the issuing of fines for failure to pay Plato road tolls, but for formal reason,s e.g., the paperworks was not drawn up properly, the truck’s owner was not behind the wheel during the alleged violation, and so on. Bubnov’s case if fundamentally different. He wants to challenge the law itself and is willing to give up at least a year of his life to do it.

Bubnov expounds his position.

“According to the Russian Federal Civil Code, damage must be paid be jointly by everyone everyone involved in causing damage. However much damage you caused that is how you pay,” he says.

[Bubnov has in mind the government’s original stated rationale for introducing the Plato road tolls system. Since cargo trucks, allegedly, cause more wear and tear on federal highways than other vehicles, the argument went, they should pay additional fees, based on the number of kilometers traveled, to compensate for this damage and thus provide more money for repairing major roads.—TRR]

“In addition, the damage I caused has to be proven. And, according to the Russian Federal Tax Code, payments cannot be arbitrary and should reflect the economic essence of the matter. Empty, my vehicle weighs 7,800 kilograms. The maximum weight of a loaded eighteen-wheeler is 44 tons. Obviously, we cause different amounts of wear and tear on the road. Why, then, should I pay the same amount as the driver of a loaded eighteen-wheeler?”

In May 2016, the Russian Federal Consitutional Court ruled the Plato road tolls system legal. Later, however, Constitutional Court Judge Gadis Gadzhiyev issued a dissenting opinion in which, among other things, he suggested clarifying the purpose of the fee, because, economically speaking, Plato is not compensation for damage, but a payment imposed on owners of heavy trucks for using the roads.

“As currently formulated, the Plato system is at odds with Russian federal laws,” says Bubnov. “By itself, travel on public roads is not an offense. There is a Russian federal government decree in which the maximum loads for different types of vehicle are set. The weight of my vehicle is legal.”

Bubnov also invokes an argument that truckers protesting Plato have made since 2015. If a toll is introduced for driving on a certain section of road, drivers should be provided with an alternative free detour. Otherwise, all federal highways would become toll roads for truckers.

Bubnov already has several legal victories under his belt. He has always served as his own defense counsel, and recently he has voluntarily defended his colleagues from different regions in court. On September 20, 2017, he won the so-called tachograph case, in which a trucker had been accused of violating work safety laws. A similar case is now being tried in Altai Territory.

If Bubnov’s appeal, as appended to his complaint against the Plato road tolls system fine, is rejected, first he will have to go to Odintsovo City Court, then to the Moscow Regional Court to appeal the ruling, and then to the Presidium of the Moscow Regional Court and, finally, to the Russian Federal Supreme Court and the Presidium of the Supreme Court. Bubnov plans to go to the bitter end with the final decision. According to his calculations, the whole process may take at least a year. If his petition is granted, the first three sets of hearings will be held in Petersburg. Bubnov plans on going the entire distance himself, without a lawyer.

“Essentially, Yuri Bubnov’s claims are correct,” says Irina Metel, executive director of the Northwest Carriers and Forwarders Union. “In practice, however, any case requires the assistance of a very competent laywer.”

“We are ready to support Yuri Bubnov in court,” says Maria Pazukhina, head of the OPR (Association of Russian Carriers) regional branch in Murmansk. “We have challenged fines before, but only on formal grounds, for example, due to incomplete lists of evidence or instances where agencies not empowered to do so tried to punish carriers. Yuri’s case is fundamentally different. In my view, the current authorities are unlikely to rule that Plato should be abolished. The OPR has been trying to detect the system’s faults in order to reveal its corruption and inefficiency. But so far we have not launched legal proceedings like this.”

“I’d been waiting for this fine for a year and a half, and I finally got it,” Bubnov told Fontanka.ru. “It’s good it came now, while the sensors have not been turned on everywhere. If the system were up and running normally, it would be harder to challenge the fine. The chances of a ruling in my favor are few, but what if suddenly the case is assigned to a judge who is about to retire and has nothing to lose, and he makes a ruling in accordance with the laws?”

FYI
According to Dmitry Pronchatov, assistant director of the Federal Road Agency, since the Plato road tolls system was launched, carriers have paid over 33.3 billion rubles [approx. 494 million rubles] into the road maintenance and construction fund. Over 900,000 vehicles have been registered in the system. The monies have been used to finance the construction of seven bridges and repairs on twenty-four emergency pipelines, as well as over a thousand kilometers of roads in forty cities and regions. Owners of twelve-ton trucks must pay 1.9 rubles for each kilometer of travel on federal highways.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up

Trucker Andrei Bazhutin: “We Want to Change the System”

OPR Leader Andrei Bazhutin Picketing in Yoshkar-Ola: “Until 2015, I Also Sat and Watched TV”
Dmitry Lyubimov
7X7
August 1, 2017

The Association of Russian Carriers (OPR) picketed Nikonov Square in Yoshkar-Ola on July 31. The picket was part of a cross-country road rally, led by OPR chair and trucker Andrei Bazhutin. On June 14, he announced his candidacy for the Russian presidency. A 7X7 correspondent attended the picket.

Several picketers arrived on Nikonov Square at 7 p.m., bearing placards. Local OPR members held banners that were more informational, while road rally participants held up smaller banners sporting slogans such as “Plato Won’t Save the Roads, It’s Only for Oligarchs,” and “Stop Lying, Stealing, and Fighting Wars.”

Picketer bearing a t-shirt that reads, “Popular Movement for Housing. Together We’ll Take Back Our Abode. #ForHousing. ndza.ru.”

Several members of the Popular Movement for Housing (NDZA) joined the road rally. Andrei Svistunov, civic activist and founder of an independent trade union, came out to support the truckers with colleagues and friends from the local Alexei Navalny campaign headquarters.

“We have never been in government, and we have no ties with any oligarchs. We’re ordinary people,” said Andrei Bazhutin. “We want to change the system. We don’t have rose-tinted glasses. We realize our road is a hard road. We’ll see what obstacles they throw in our path. Until 2015, I also sat and watched TV. I went on trucking runs and watched TV. Nowadays, I don’t watch it at all. I trust the internet, but only partly. Here we are, outside, among people. Everywhere the doors have been slammed shut in our face. Our association has tried to make contact with the government and the president’s staff. The people in our association are grown men, and they’ve been through their share of hot spots. We own our own big rigs. People know who we are, and that’s a good thing.”

Andrei Bazhutin, chair of the Association of Russian Carriers (OPR)

The road rally has taken place in an abbreviated form. Previously, big rigs were involved in it, but now the convoy consists of only two cars and a minibus. Residents of Murmansk, Vologda, Tver, Moscow, and St. Petersburg have been involved in the rally. It has been paid for by participants themselves and private donors. During their meetings with the people in the towns where they stop, the truckers talk about different problems, including housing and hoodwinked investors in cooperative residential buildings.

“Initially, the Communists actively supported us. I met with Vladimir Rodin and Valery Rashkin, CPRF MPs in the State Duma. But they probably will not keep supporting us in the future, since we talk about the fact that Russia’s current party-based political system is rotten to the core. We are categorically opposed to the structure that has now been established in Russia. We believe the future lies with social movements, who must nominate grassroots candidates. That is probably the most positive know-how from the late-period Soviet Union that we can borrow. Power must rotate,” argues Bazhutin.

According to Bazhutin, the interests of the OPR and Alexei Navalny intersect, and the truckers are involved in his protest rallies. At pickets in Moscow, the drivers pasted placards with images of rubber duckies on their trucks. (The rubber ducky is a symbol of the “Don’t Call Him Dimon” campaign, whose supporters demand that authorities respond to the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s video exposé of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.)

Anti-Corruption Foundation, Don’t Call Him Dimon: Palaces, Yachts, and Vineyards—Dmitry Medvedev’s Secret Empire. YouTube video, with subtitles in English. Posted March 2, 2017, by Alexei Navalny

“2015 was the year of our camp in Khimki: our entire movement was launched there. Navalny filed a petition in the Commercial Court to reveal the terms of the public-private partnership agreement [establishing the Plato road tolls system], and many of our guys attended the hearing. Navalny wanted to visit our camp. But our goal was to keep the camp up and running, and if Navalny had shown up, we didn’t know whether it would have a positive or negative impact. So we turned him down. It led to a slight misunderstanding. Nowadays, we don’t say that Navalny has been going about things the wrong way. We see circumstances slightly differently. This concerns, for example, a united candidate from the opposition. He might not make it to the election. Those comrades over there [Bazhutin points to the law enforcement officers keeping an eye on the picket] might not allow it. If there is no such candidate, then what is left? We need candidates representing movements and grassroots organizations. Let ordinary folk nominate their own candidates. We shall see. Let them get themselves registered, and then we’ll decide whom to support,” said Bazhutin.

The truckers of the OPR have been on an indefinite strike since March 27. They have made six demands, including sacking the current government and expressing no confidence in the Russian president, to abolishing the Plato road tolls system and recalculating the excise tax on fuel.

The next stop on OPR’s road rally is Nizhny Novgorod.

All photos by Anna Pyatak and courtesy of 7X7. See the rest of her photos from the picket by clicking on the link to the original article, above. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up

Let’s Cancel the Party and Call It a Night

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Car parked in central Petersburg, 8 July 2017. Photo by the Russian Reader

Given the sheer numbers of reactionary/counterrevolutionary events and incidents happening in Russia every day, and the equally astronomical quantities of reactionary/counter-revolutionary statements and actions committed by Russian officials high and low (e.g. East Aleppo) over the past couple of decades, it seems a nasty farce to commemorate, much less celebrate, the centennial of the Russian revolution(s) this year.

Present-day Russia and Russians have no copyright on revolution, and this stricture applies equally to self-identified “revolutionary” or leftist Russians, who have nothing to teach or say to anyone about revolution.

Clear the current Russian built and symbolic landscape of all the post-revolutionary tat and kitsch (nearly all of it reactionary, because what could be more anti-revolutionary than a cult of personality like the one generated around the dead Lenin) that clutters it physically and nominally (e.g., Insurrection Square in Petersburg), and you would find the wildly reactionary country that actually occupies the vast expanse between the Gdansk Bay and Chukchi Peninsula.

It’s another matter that there are lots of Russians who, pluckily and smartly, individually and collectively, have been trying to overcome this black reaction in bigger and smaller ways over the “miraculous” years of the successive Putin regimes.

Unfortunately, however, their voices have mostly been muffled by the din of counterrevolution issuing from the Kremlin, the State Duma, and the post-Soviet Russian state’s ever-proliferating set of security forces and regulatory watchdogs, and by their own would-be allies among the brand-name liberals and leftists, most of whom have been concerned with promoting their own social and cultural capital, not making common cause with boring math instructors like “mass disorder stoker” Dmitry Bogatov or, more surprisingly, with the country’s endlessly resourceful independent truckers and other inspiring grassroots freedom fighters, none of whom have the time or the inclination to commemorate the famous revolution that, arguably, went counterrevolutionary more quickly than you could say Jack Robinson. TRR