The leader of the Khimki truck drivers was detained in St. Petersburg

On the morning of January 20, Andrei Bazhutin, the leader of the Khimki truckers, was detained in St. Petersburg. As he himself told Novaya Gazeta, the reason for the incident was not explained.

“In the morning I left the front door, three police officers detained me without bringing any charges and said that they would take me to the 29th police department, and then to court,” Bazhutin said. - But in fact, we immediately went to court, a meeting was scheduled on the case of petty hooliganism: the reason was the episode that took place on December 29, 2016 on the Western High-Speed ​​​​Diameter (WHSD, a toll road along the western part of St. Petersburg overlooking the Gulf of Finland - ed. ) in St. Petersburg - on the fact of bending the barrier.

According to the activist, some people do not pay tolls on the highway, but simply go around the barrier. “In these cases, the employees of the WHSD, as a rule, file an application for an accident, the car is put on the wanted list. We wanted to confirm that the fact of an accident cannot be, since neither the barrier nor the car is damaged,” the activist says.

On December 29, Bazhutin tried to capture on video the technology of such a passage: “We drove up to the barrier, stopped and recorded that the barrier has a certain degree of tilt horizontally and vertically, according to GOSTs, there is no harm. We are convinced that the collection of tolls on this section is illegal, and even more so the collection of fines, because there is no such violation in Russian law: “free travel on a toll highway.”

According to Bazhutin, this is similar to the Platon system: “The money is taken by a private company that has entered into a concession agreement, and the company itself is registered in Cyprus, and it receives money regardless of traffic and how many cars actually used the road.”

Currently, Andrey Bazhutin is waiting for the court session, which, at his request, was postponed to 16:00 Moscow time.

“I wanted to write a statement that I was actually stolen from the front door, illegally detained, but the judge rejected my complaint, said: “Contact the prosecutor's office.” Next, I wanted to write a motion to postpone the trial until tomorrow so that I could be provided with a lawyer, but the judge said that the case would be considered today, but postponed the trial to 16:00.