Riot police break up Russia auto protest (AFP)
Another protester, Timur Safarov, said the government was taking away people’s basic freedoms by telling them to buy locally-made cars.
“First, we have been deprived of our right to elect, now they are taking away our right to choose cars,” said Safarov.
Even more…They are trying to force us to buy the Russian cars ( so that the industrty survives). But people living on the Far-East were always complaining that the production of these cars is located in the European part of Russia and transportation makes them much more expensive when arriving to Vladivostok. That was the main reason of why the government was taking it slow with the prohibition of asian-cars import. Also important to mention that import taxes were increased anyway on the entire cars but were kept unchanged for the spare parts (also because of the protests). But basically people were knocking down the cars e.g. in Japan and then after the customs contol assemble them back.
But now Putin manages to make all transportation costs for Russian cars equal to zero and this way to eliminate the last argument of demonstrators. This will also decrease the income of Russian Railways, because it seems unlikely that the government will make up the omitted revenue…
It’s an old story…..one intervention piled on top of another.