Top Traffic Cop Defends Official Motorcades

Traffic jams near Kremlin are a daily headache for many Moscow motorists, who are forced to idle while police wave through motorcades for senior officials. But the country's top road safety official Friday defended the practice of blocking traffic to make way for officials, saying security concerns come first. "Of course, when we stop traffic even for a few minutes, we get huge traffic jams. But probably, the security of being accompanied by police is more important than this," Viktor Kiryanov, head of the Interior Ministry's road safety department, told the State Duma in a question-and-answer session Friday, Interfax reported. Kiryanov was responding to a complaint about traffic from a Communist deputy, Interfax said. Traffic jams are particularly severe on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, the thoroughfare that officials take to the city center from homes on the elite Rublyovskoye Shosse. Drivers are regularly forced to stop on side-streets as the officials' motorcades speed by. The road is jammed for an "hour or so" in the morning and for a "couple of hours" in the evening, said Leonid Olshansky, vice president of the Movement of Russian Motorists. The problem of roadblocks is most noticeable in Moscow because of the large number of government officials, Olshansky said. In fact, only around 15 people in Russia are entitled to this privilege, he said. "According to Russian law, we only block roads for a very small number of people: the president, the prime minister, the head of the constitutional court and so on," Olshansky said. Olshansky accused "unscrupulous traffic police officers" of taking bribes to block off traffic for individuals not entitled to such a service. A city traffic police officer came under fire earlier this week when Interfax reported that he failed to step in when armed robbers attacked two cash couriers Monday in central Moscow and allowed the criminals to escape in a car. Interfax quoted a traffic policeman as saying later: "We were providing support so that a VIP could drive past, and the officers didn't have time for a shooting." Moscow traffic police chief Sergei Kazantsev denied the report on Wednesday. No escorted motorcades drove past that day, Kazantsev told Moskovsky Komsomolets. "Our officer was the first to run to the crime scene, he correctly assessed the situation [and] radioed information on the criminals who escaped," Kazantsev was quoted as saying.