Russians are pissed off at Kremlin bureaucrats who stop traffic with frequent “blue bucket” motorcades.
From the Financial Times: “When you have to close down half the city so that some official can get to his meeting a little faster, you are understandably going to create dissatisfaction. They close the streets to everyone – to fire trucks, ambulances, everyone,” said Pyotr Shkumatov, head of an organisation known as the “Blue Buckets” devoted to “democratising” Russia’s roads. The name is a joking reference to the blue strobe light atop official cars.
In July, a woman in Kamchatka had her car sideswiped by a van in a motorcade apparently belonging to Mr Medvedev. The footage, recorded on Olga Kuklina’s dashboard camera and featuring her infant daughter screaming in the back seat, has been an internet sensation.
Ms Kulina said the federal bodyguard service blamed her for the collision until they realised she had filmed it.
According to an article in the Argument I Fakty newspaper about the incident, one official was overheard telling another: “If this bitch didn’t have everything on camera, we could do a 1937 on her,” apparently referring to the year at the height of Stalin’s terror.
Here’s a GIF of a protestor jumping on a blue bucket car. The driver gets out and knocks the bucket off the protestor’s head only to find that the protestor is wearing a smaller bucket under the first bucket!
Check out the Blue Bucket website for more videos of Blue Bucket motorcade abuse.