A fatal car crash in downtown Moscow has exposed growing public anger at officials who seem to live above the law, as they flout the rules of the road and endanger the lives of ordinary Russians.
A black Mercedes with a flashing blue light on the roof and a VIP inside collided head-on with a little hatchback, killing the two women in the car. The VIP — a vice president of Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company — leaves in another car, and police blame the hatchback for swerving into oncoming traffic.
However, civic activists have disputed the official version, and a rap song condemning the oil executive to hell has become an instant YouTube sensation, with more than 300,000 hits by Friday afternoon.
In recent years, numerous government officials, powerful businessmen or their relatives have been involved in fatal accidents, often caused by drunken driving, and gotten away with fines or reprisals, but this time people are saying “enough.”
Bloggers are urging Russians to boycott Lukoil gas stations, and opposition activists are calling on the Kremlin to stop the “lawlessness” of officials and rich businessmen who flout traffic rules and avoid responsibility for accidents they cause.
Muscovites are all too accustomed to seeing luxury sedans driving in the opposite lane to escape gridlock. The cars often have flashing blue lights, issued mainly to government officials to help them get to important meetings on time.
Lukoil vice president Anatoly Barkov said in a statement posted on the company Web site that he was interested in an “objective and unbiased investigation” into last week’s accident. He also expressed his condolences to the family of Olga Alexandrina, the 35-year-old driver of the hatchback, and her mother-in-law, Vera Sidelnikova, 73. Both women were gynecologists and were on their way to work.
Some of the strongest support for the two women has come from civic organizations formed to defend the rights of drivers.
Sergei Kanayev of the Federation of Car Owners says he has eyewitness evidence that it was Barkov’s car that pulled into the lane of oncoming traffic. He also claims that police removed numerous closed-circuit cameras from the major Moscow avenue where the crash occurred.
“I personally saw there were no cameras left some 70m around the site,” Kanayev said.
Police have denied this.
“The crash site was blocked by a billboard,” Sergei Kazantsev of Moscow traffic police said in televised remarks.
City police and federal investigators were not available for comment on Friday despite numerous phone calls.
A lawyer representing Alexandrina’s family says the lack of footage will make it difficult to receive justice.
“We don’t trust Moscow police and investigators,” Igor Trunov said.
Prominent opposition leader Boris Nemtsov said the incident was indicative of the political system created by Vladimir Putin, the former president and current prime minister.
“Putin lives by the principle ‘friends get everything, and the rest get the law,’” Nemtsov said. “Since oligarchs are friends, everything is for them. They are a caste above the law, and Putin heads the caste.”
The controversy inspired rapper Ivan Alexeyev, also known as Noize MC, to write an angry song that has attracted wide attention since its posting on Tuesday on YouTube.
“Miserable mob, shiver with fear, a patrician is coming your way,” Alexeyev sang on behalf of Barkov, whose mug shot was superimposed over the figure of Satan from an episode of US TV show South Park. “We’re late to hell today, so get out of the chariot’s way.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver