The leader of the Association of Carriers of Russia was arrested for 15 days

The Tosno city court arrested Andrey Bazhutin, leader of the Association of Carriers of Russia (OPR), for 15 days for driving a car without a license. Arseniy Vesnin, a journalist from Ekho Moskvy, wrote about this on his Twitter:

Bazhutin was detained yesterday in the Leningrad region. Together with him, the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the OPR, Sergei Vladimirov, was also detained. They were taken from the middle of the column of ODA activists, which was heading to St. Petersburg. Another member of the Association of Carriers, Aleksey Radkov, told OVD-Info that Bazhutin drove his wife's car from repair, and the rest helped him.

Later it became known that Vladimirov was also arrested for 15 days.

Police officers explained the detention by the fact that Bazhutin and Vladimirov were driving without a driver's license. According to Radkov, Bazhutin has been deprived of his rights “for political reasons” for six months already, due to protests against the WHSD (Western High-Speed ​​Diameter - a toll highway in St. Petersburg).

Vladimirov did not know that he was deprived of his rights, since the court of appeal took place on the same day as the documents were submitted for retrial. He lost his license due to an accident involving his truck. However, according to colleagues, another person was the driver of the car during the accident, but the court did not take this into account.

According to Novaya Gazeta, on the morning of his arrest, bailiffs came to Bazhutin in connection with an unpaid fine of 30,000 rubles “for organizing a strike.” According to Bazhutin, he was detained by employees of the Center for Combating Extremism, and the entire detention was a “planned operation.”

From December 15 to December 25, the Association of Carriers of Russia plans to hold an all-Russian strike of truckers against the Platon system.