A rough path to you

The truckers who were dissatisfied with Plato drove up to Moscow. Reporting Ilya Azar

For the third day, on the approaches to Moscow there are dozens of truckers protesting against Plato - a system for charging a fedal route fee. Fores are parked in Lyubertsy and Khimki; Drivers are waiting for colleagues from Dagestan and are trying to develop a plan for protest actions. On Friday, December 4, in the afternoon, the movement on the Moscow Ring Road stopped - it seemed that a long -announced protest rally had begun. However, it turned out that the ring road was blocked by traffic police officers to skip the motorcade. Closer to the night, the truckers decided to “break the camp” in Khimki in the parking lot near the Mega shopping center. And on the morning on Saturday, some went to rally to Suvorovskaya Square. Together with them was a special correspondent of Medusa Ilya Azar .

Peaceful plans

Truckers from St. Petersburg turned out to be the main driving protest: on November 24, they staged a picket near the city hall of their city. On the evening of December 3, St. Petersburg truckers reached Moscow and stood on the Leningrad highway. The police quickly arrived at them and cordoned off the parking lot, not allowing other fours to join the column. Closer to night, truckers found ways to advance even closer to the capital, drove to the parking lot near the Mega shopping center in Khimki, where they spent the night.

On Friday morning, December 4, truckers began to discuss further plans. To begin serious protest actions, the drivers clearly lacked mass - 15 trucks were parked in the parking lot near Mega and a dozen other cars.

Police officers who were on duty in the parking lot refused to let new trucks to Mega, and were ready to release those that came at night only towards St. Petersburg. The news from Lyubertyz, where the second group of truckers stood up, also made additional confusion during the day. Here, the head of the professional drivers, Alexander Kotov, announced the transfer of the action on December 6-almost two hundred trucks from Dagestan should be reached by this day to the capital.

- Yes, cats can delay the action before the New Year! - shouted at the parking lot in Mega one of the St. Petersburg truckers.

“If we decide that the action is transferred to the 6th, then we don’t have to do anything yet, we will sit without noise,” the coordinator Mikhail exhorted.

- We need actions! We must go slowly and move. The police will not let us in, but there will be a precedent, and the press will show this case. In the meantime, we are sitting, nothing will happen, ”the elderly supporter of active protest continued.

- The press shows us and so! - the coordinator said to this.

-They show how we eat, how we talk-blah blah blah-the truck driver insisted that truckers were capable of more.

“We need more people - it is unrealistic to hold an action with such a small party,” the coordinator objected.

They continued to swear. The coordinator Michael insisted that he did not need sensations in the form of a riot police who beat people. The driver blamed that activists in vain jerked people. There was no unity: someone hoped for negotiations with the authorities, and someone was ready to go to the Moscow Ring Road at least now.

Since the end of November, when the first truckers from the regions reached the Moscow Region, the coordinators of the rally discussed methods of protest. There were proposals to block the Moscow Ring Road, go along it with a “snail” (that is, at a minimum permitted speed) or completely head towards the Kremlin. However, there were not so many supporters of radical options.

- What can we do if we are civilians? “Snail” is already a rally, and rallies are not in the legal field, it is a violation of the rights of citizens, ”the trucker explained to me.

- And block the track? -some journalist entered the conversation.

- Of course not. This is a violation of the law, ”the coordinator Michael answered.

- And where is the guarantee that we will not be taken from here to the department? - added an elderly trucker.

- We do not have machine guns and machine guns, why detain us? - answered him.

- And if riot police arrives, is it not necessary to give change in self -defense? - the same journalist specified.

- We are peaceful people, we are hard workers. Stop the provocation, ”Mikhail answered him.

Not deciding what to do, truckers decided to wait and parted in the parking lot. On the hood, the parked “Volga” organized a power point - tea, cookies, sandwiches, kefir, tomatoes. Toward evening, boiled buckwheat was brought. In order to occupy themselves with something, truckers in a thousandth, probably, once discussed with each other or with reporters the shortcomings of the Plato system.

- Should the trucks pay for road damage? And roads for whom? For cyclists, or what? We are paying twice already - transport tax and road excise tax. And now you still need to pay, ”one was indignant.

- We were called to engage in small business - truckers bought cars, got into loans, and now this business is killing Plato. If you need to pay 30-40 thousand per month, then this is at least half of the trucker's income, ”Vladimir Matveev, an intelligent trucker with glasses, explained to me.

He claims that in Russia there are about 900 thousand in Russia not yet registered in Plato trucks; At the same time, 600 thousand of them do not belong to large cargo companies, but to private owners. These people, according to him, are definitely protesting, since it is precisely them, unlike companies owning a significant number of trucks, that Plato runs out.

- And where are they then? I asked.

-Someone was not allowed by the police. Many have been striking since the beginning of November and have already been exhausted. In addition, you need to spend crazy money on diesel fuel, and many just sent a representative here. For example, I was raised by the truckers of Karelia and the Murmansk region.

Most of the “mega” of St. Petersburg truckers are sure that to successfully complete the protests, it is enough to get on the air of federal television channels.

- We need to gather a large community for a peaceful action so that the central media arrive and show that we have trouble. We are trying to convey this calmly, ”said Matveev.

“But they will come only when there will be a team from above,” I objected.

-Plato began with us, but will continue with 10-ton cars, and the cars will also be there. Truckers must convey this to people. As we can, as we can and protest, ”answered the trucker.

- People must understand that we are not only for ourselves here, but for all the people. But if nothing decides in the weekend, it all will be blown away, ”his colleague added.

Instead of the first channel or “Russia”, on December 4, the Ukrainian television channel “Inter” came to truckers. “We will give them an interview-everyone will say that we are against Putin,” someone warned, but they still gave the Ukrainians an interview.

- The action was transferred more than once. What plans do you have now? - asked the journalist "Inter".

“The problem is that we have no coordination at all,” the trucker in a leather jacket honestly answered.

- Why?

“Because we were previously unfamiliar, we are trying to coordinate, but traffic police officers do not allow us to bunch,” said the trucker.

With coordination, drivers are really tight, so everyone was surprised in the parking lot when at about 15:00 there were reports on social networks that some trucks organized a “snail” on the Moscow Ring Road near Leningradka.

Overlapping MKAD

I was looking for a “snail” by taxi and barely managed to get to its “head” along the extreme left row of the external side of the Moscow Ring Road, when the movement completely stopped.

In front of a completely empty icon in four rows, trucks lined up (in the other two there were cars), and in front of them stood a lonely employee of the traffic police. As it turned out, it was he who stopped the entire external side of the Moscow Ring Road for half an hour.

- Is this a "snail"? I asked him.

- No no. There are expectations, but so far there is no such thing on the Moscow Art Theater. This is my order to stop the movement.

The truckers from the trucks standing in front of the police admitted that they did not participate in the protest, but simply go about their business. “Here, the traffic police managed it, she blocked it,” the driver laughed.

Two truckers left their cars to clarify with the policeman whether he stopped the Moscow Ring Road for a long time. “They told me that for a short while. I don’t need it either, understand it yourself, to stand here and engage in nonsense, ”the traffic police officer answered them.

I asked the truckers whether they support the struggle of colleagues with Plato.

- Why do I need this? I better hug my wife by the tie and go to bed! - answered one.

- What do you think about Plato?

“I work for the owner, to me ***** [anyway] on this“ Plato, ”the second replied.

- And on me on the drum. You won’t pass more than a thousand miles. Well, you will pay a ruble ( in many regions of Russia, a “ruble” is called a thousand rubles - approx. “Medus” ). Yes, you will give more to the cops on the way than you pay for this Plato. That there is, that he is not.

- Why then do they protest?

-Well, if now all truckers are silent, then in 2016 they will introduce Plato-2 for cars. And in general, if not protest, they will make five rubles, and so reduced to one and a half rubles.

“In general, the cop made a good picture,” the trucker changed the subject, looking at the lonely Depeisnik in front of the construction of trucks.

- He specifically chose to put the wagons forward. Now as if the trucks are striking, ********* [cool]! - developed his thought of a colleague.

The rest of the truckers sat quietly and waited, and the drivers of cars quickly lost their patience. Passengers of the stuck buses and completely went along the Moscow Ring Road.

- I have a wedding anniversary, I give a cross! Well, let me go, ”the driver who ran up to the policeman prayed.

- A little remains! - he answered.

“I think that in the near future the whole country will laugh at you,” said a gray -haired man in a scarf of the flowers of the Ukrainian flag.

“In vain you think so,” the traffic police officer answered him.

“Personally, nothing depends on you, but your work here is a circus,” the man said. I specified whether he was Ukrainian. “You guessed - I am a Georgian. But I support Ukraine. And truckers, ”he answered.

Finally, after half an hour, an traffic police officer started moving along the Moscow Ring Road, and, stepping aside, began to ask me about the striking truckers. “I heard on the radio that about a thousand trucks near Moscow are standing. This is true?" He asked.

Later it turned out that the MKAD overlap could be due to the visit to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the Disabled Rehabilitation Center in the north of Moscow. Whether the truckers organized on December 4, the “snail” somewhere else remained incomprehensible. Petersburg drivers in Khimki claimed that they did not know anything like this, but perhaps this is due to poor coordination.

According to one of the coordinators of the truckers Sergei Gulyaev, the trucks still interfered with the traffic on the Moscow Ring Road. “Thank you, to everyone who decided to break into the Moscow Ring Road today! You made this day! By 17 o’clock, the ring was brown from traffic jams - snail traffic, bothering with the road police, stopping and even the evacuation of one of our trucks with Roltsevo - all this was not in vain, ”he wrote on Facebook in the evening.

The opinions of Moscow motorists about the overlap of the Moscow Ring Road (which they perceived precisely as a action of truckers), diverged in the range from the “guys, well done” to “the right to deprive these freaks”.

Policy

Already in the darkness, the State Duma deputy from the Communist Party Vladimir Rodin came to the truckers in Khimki. On November 30, he met with four truckers in the State Duma, and then one of them after the meeting responded to the conversation as follows: “You can no longer talk with the deputies anymore.”

But on December 4, it was the truckers who called the homeland to the “mege”. “The police began to press them, autozaks came to the parking lot, the guys asked to come, and I was forced to get here from the Novoryazan highway,” Rodin explained to me.

On the spot, the communist helped to call on the parking lot another truck, which tore off the applause and earned the respect of the drivers. “The deputy is trying, he does at least something for us, agreed that our car is launched here,” two young truckers told me.

At the same time, Rodin asked the truckers to come on Saturday to his action on Suvorovskaya Square.

- Do not forget that tomorrow you have a meeting with the deputy! - Rodin said a little bitterly ( a meeting with the deputy is the form of a street action that does not require, according to the law of coordination with the authorities - approx. "Medusa" ).

- Are you piaste, or something, have you come here? - asked the deputy a man with a video camera.

- Comrades, who asked me to come here? - Instead of an answer, he turned to the truckers of Rodin.

- Yes, we called a person! - the drivers answered.

- Here! Why be a provocateur? For what? - the deputy went on the attack.

- Yes, this is Sasha Sotnik. He generally shouts “Glory to Ukraine,” said someone about a man with a video camera (this journalist is really included in the list of “24 friends of Ukraine”; there are a variety of people from Angelina Jolie actress to the musician Andrei Makarevich).

- So that everything is good and beautiful, give me a list of those who want to perform. See you! - the deputy said goodbye.

- A rough path to you! - the truckers wished him.

I clarified the homeland whether I persuaded the truckers to abandon the “snails” and the road overlap, but he replied that “they are adult boys and girls, and this is their business.”

On the way to the car, the MP Rodin approached the police.

- You see, one truck drove, and nothing happened. I am a well -known person in this area, not the first day interact [with the police]. They will not go anywhere today or tomorrow, because it bothers you, ”the deputy reassured the police.

“This is not bothering us.” Do you know how much citizens go through Mega per day? About a million.

- Well, let them go.

- And who will be responsible for anti -terrorist security? - the police officer asked the deputy.

- And where does this? - the deputy did not understand.

“Well, I don’t know what lies in these trucks,” the policeman said thoughtfully (about an hour after this conversation, all the trucks in the parking lot checked the dog handler with the dog).

“They will not go anywhere, under my guarantees,” the deputy promised the police officer again. “People will sit on the subway tomorrow morning and go to meet with the deputies, and then they will come back, they will get on cars and leave,” the police promised that none of the truckers was going to fulfill.

In addition to the Communist Party, their ideological opponents from the Libertarian party came to Khimki. Her representative Konstantin handed out leaflets with advice to truckers: “Leave all the hopes that Putin will hear you”, “Forget about the systemic opposition”, “Do not put too much on your leaders so that they are replaced” “Do not be afraid to go too far, intensity of struggle and consequences.”

“Isn't the left protest?” - I specified the Libertarian Constantine.

“In many ways, yes ...” he thought. - But many are working for themselves, they are not to intervene in their activities, against unnecessary taxation. These are just our questions, and these ideas are very close to us.

“Do they consider you close to themselves?”

- I don’t know, some think that the Communist Party is closer to them, but among them there are different people. Our task is to show that we are with them, and that they can count on our support, ”Konstantin invigorated.

At that moment, the trucker Vladimir came up to him and said completely incorrectly: “Take your leaflets from here, go beyond the parking lot and give them out there.”

- What do you think about Libertarians? - I asked him when Konstantin was retreating.

“I don’t think anything about them, but the leaflets with calls are useless to us,” Vladimir answered.

- Can you? I hung it on my car,-the Libertarian returned with a bright yellow leaflet with a pattern of a truck and the inscription "Do not go on us." Konstantin explained that the needles drawn on the truck symbolize the “porcupine”, a symbol of the American Libertarians.

“You can,” the trucker allowed

“Well, cookies, personally from me,” Konstantin handed the box to Vladimir with Choco Pie.

- Thank you for that.

Most truckers claimed that they were not interested in politics. Their main complaint against the Russian authorities is that they gave the Plato of the company Igor Rotenberg-he owns 50% of the shares of the Plato Management Plato RT-Invest Transport Systems; He is the son of a friend Vladimir Putin Arkady Rotenberg.

-People want justice, they do not want to pay the requisitions of some company. We are forced to pay in the pocket of the oligarchs, we all understand where this money will go, ”said the trucker.

“If in our country to get rid of corruption and if the federal roads controlled the state, then the people would not mind,” the coordinator Mikhail added.

“You will stand here until corruption disappears?” - Sarcastically specified the German journalist.

- No, until the Plato system is canceled. It is necessary that the state collects money, but at the same time there is no corruption-that we are sure that this money will go for the repair of roads, otherwise in our state they steal money directly from under the nose from the authorities, ”Mikhail answered.

Putin here few scolds aloud. “Take a transport tax of 40 thousand, excise tax, and now also a road collection? Stopped at all! " - shouted an elderly trucker. Координатор Михаил рассудительно говорил, что считал Путина сильным политиком, и для страны тот сделал очень много, но «последние его действия разочаровали».

Дальнобойщики долго обсуждали предстоящую акцию КПРФ. Женщина, которая представилась мне штурманом («Думаете, я просто так приехала жопу морозить? Мне детей кормить нечем»), настойчиво просила всех на нее прийти: «Нам надо встретиться, все обсудить, чтобы нас было много!»

— КПРФ сейчас шевелятся по одной простой причине — скоро выборы, — сказал кто-то из дальнобойщиков.

— Не знаю, мужики, как вы, но я всю жизнь голосую за КПРФ, — подошел другой.

— А почему у тебя серпа и молота нет на машине?

— У меня Сталин наколот на одном месте, — добавил другой, и они начали вспоминать, как в СССР шофер получал тысячу рублей за три недели работы во время посевной.

В пятницу вечером питерские дальнобойщики объявили , что разбивают у «Меги» в Химках лагерь минимум на неделю. Похоже, что решение депутатов Госдумы, которые в тот же день снизили штраф за неуплату «Платону» с 450 тысяч до 5 тысяч рублей, их не удовлетворило.

Meeting with the deputy

В субботу на встречу с депутатами Госдумы от КПРФ на Суворовской площади пришло около 150 человек, не меньше 50 из них были дальнобойщиками, остальные — сочувствующие. Встреча выглядела как митинг — с плакатами против «Платона» и правительства и со звукоусиливающей аппаратурой.

Депутат Родин заявил, что «Платон» должен уйти вместе с правительством (второй вопрос коммунистов беспокоит давно и явно больше проблем дальнобойщиков). «Мы поднимаем свой флаг за права дальнобойщиков», — прокричал Родин, а потом добавил: «Я от многих из вас слышал, что вы теперь проголосуете за нас».

- So? — вскрикнул он.

- Yes! — раздались ответные крики из толпы.

— Хорошо, спасибо, — ответил успокоенный депутат.

Член ЦК КПРФ Валерий Рашкин, видимо, оценив невеликое число митингующих, успокаивал собравшихся: «Товарищи, полководец Суворов за вашей спиной кивает. Он учил побеждать не числом, а умением. А мы уже умеем!».

Дальше депутаты коммунисты дали слово представителям дальнобойщиков, которые выступали куда более остро.

Водитель из Дагестана зачем-то рассказал, что «дагестанские дальнобойщики — настоящие патриоты страны, и готовы за нее воевать».

— Мы не против Путина! Мы его уважаем, но пусть он наведет порядок в нашей стране, разберется! — сказал дагестанец.

— Напоминаю, что мы все свои требования направляем правительству! — сориентировался Родин.

Самым пламенным выступлением стала речь дальнобойщика из Иваново (он стоит вместе с питерцами в Химках), который отрекомендовался Сан Санычем.

«Дальнобойщики осознали, что не хотят быть рабами, они стоят не только за себя! Должна быть солидарность с другими группами обездоленных — учителями, [обманутыми] дольщиками и пенсионерами. То есть, более чем с 80 процентами населения нашей многострадальной страны», — говорил он.

«Мы должны также сказать: „В отставку правительство!“, — кричал Сан Саныч, все больше распаляясь. — Если у правительства нет денег, то, япона мать, пусть конфискуют миллиард у губернаторов Сахалина и Коми, Сердюкова и Васильевой! На Майорке дачи конфискуйте! Терпение у народа кончается! Не можете обеспечить народ — идите на …». И это дальнобойщик еще явно не читалрасследование ФБК про сыновей генпрокурора РФ Юрия Чайки.

«Мо-ло-дец», — скандировали ему из толпы.

«Они предали русскоязычное население на Донбассе, а в Сирии устроили полигон, на который куча бабла уходит. Ну японский городовой!», — перешел дальнобойщик к международным новостям.

После выступления Сан Саныча ко мне подошла женщина и заметила: «Митингуй — не митингуй, все равно получишь…» и сделала многозначительную паузу. Встреча с депутатами КПРФ продолжалась.

Неподалеку от места проведения акции стояли два активиста Национально-освободительного движения (НОД возглавляет депутат Госдумы от «Единой России» Евгений Федоров) и проводили просветительскую работу. «Дальнобойщиков настраивают против правительства, а в конечном счете, против Путина. Все же ясно! Механизм фур Госдеп использовал еще для свержения (президента Чили Сальвадоре) Альенде! Они делают ровно тоже самое у нас», — говорил активист НОДа неравнодушным прохожим. Их было не много.

Тем временем, на стоянке у «Меги» в Химках утром появились три автобуса с ОМОНом. Пока они просто стоят.

Ilya Azar

Moscow