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TRUCKERS' COMPLAINTS & PROTESTS * Russia
* Moscow - For protesting russian truckers, A Christmas far from home
(Video from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty - Jan 7, 2016: A small group of Russian truck drivers have been staging a protest at an Ikea parking lot since December 2, voicing their opposition to a new road-tax collection system which they say will drive them out of business. Their protests meant spending Orthodox Christmas at the freezing site)
-- After dark in the frigid parking lot of an Ikea outlet north of Moscow, in the trailer of a grubby white truck heated by a generator, a dozen men are sitting in winter coats and hats watching a Soviet blockbuster on a projector... They intend to stay until spring -- or longer -- to protest a new road-tax-collection system called Platon that they say will drive them out of business... With its 10 or so parked trucks draped with banners lambasting the road tax and the state media that has largely ignored their protest action, the encampment in Khimki, 20 kilometers north of Moscow, makes for a forlorn but defiant spectacle... Alutai says he has no intention of abandoning his protest in the face of the cold temperatures that have dropped to -16 degrees Celsius. "I've already got nothing to lose," he says... Ivan Alutai, a 31-year-old trucker from Petrozavodsk, far north of Moscow, who owns his own truck and is self-employed, says that the tax will severely erode his profits. He's also angry that the payment collection system is run by a company controlled by a son of Arkady Rotenberg, an old friend and judo sparring partner of Putin...
Khimki, North Moscow, Russia Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, by Tom Balmforth - 7 Jan 2016
Labels: truckers complaints, truckers' protests
posted by Unknown @ 5:45 AM
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