“The bridge is mined, get there as you like”: truckers spoke about traffic jams due to Prigozhin’s rebellion
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On June 24, while most Russians were feverishly reading and listening to the news of the armed mutiny, truckers were in trouble. Difficulties affected those moving along federal highways south of Moscow – they were blocked. The bottleneck was the bridges across the Oka, a natural barrier on the way to Moscow. There “relief” came only on Monday.
“I passed from Lipetsk just a couple of minutes before the closing of the bridge across the Oka,” the driver of a refrigerated truck from one of the major domestic carriers told MK. – I had to stand for more than an hour at the control, looked at all the cars, including walking with mirrors, looking under the bottoms of cars. They let me through, and after about three minutes I heard on the radio: that’s it, the bridge was closed. The men were yelling obscenities: what to do, where to go? At the post, they were answered: whatever you want, it’s better to get away.”
The Kashirskoe highway (both the old and the toll M4) was blocked on the bridges across the Oka already on Saturday morning. A little later, traffic was also closed on the bridge of the federal highway M2 “Crimea” near Serpukhov: the old Simferopol highway does not have a bridge there, it was destroyed about 30 years ago. Finally, by the middle of the day they closed the bridge over the Oka on the M5 Ural federal highway and the Shchurovsky bridge on the old Ryazanka in the Kolomna region.
“I got stuck in the Zaoksky district on Saturday,” says Vadim, the driver of a 7-ton truck in one of the corporate parks. – I needed to be in the Moscow region, in the Kubinka region. While listening to the radio what was going on, they closed not only the M4, but also the M2. There was once a crossing in Tarusa, but this is for cars, and does it work? The only option was to go through Kaluga, which is 5 hours of extra travel. There was a lot of traffic, but overall it was ok. I used up extra fuel for about 3000 rubles.
Another bridge across the Oka – in the city of Ozyory – was closed on Saturday, then opened and closed several times. However, as truckers told MK, the passage of trucks was limited on it – this applies to all bridges in settlements, because transit through many of them on heavy trucks (especially more than 7 tons of carrying capacity) is prohibited. Over the weekend in the Lakes there were several accidents in the area of \u200b\u200bthis bridge – for some time it was the only one functioning.
“I came to Kolomna to load retro cars for the festival in Ozyory, I was ready to get behind the wheel, but then they said that there were overlaps everywhere, and the festival was canceled,” says Alexei, a tow truck driver. – As a result, the festival turned into barbecue right in Kolomna, and, they say, those who arrived on Friday got to Ozyory – they had an informal picnic in nature.
However, such freedom of maneuver is the lot of small (7 or less tons) trucks: drivers of main trucks (those with a carrying capacity of more than 10 tons, with semi-trailers, 10 meters or more long) did not have to choose. They informed the authorities about force majeure and got stuck in traffic jams for many hours. Of course, they were looking for detour options – for example, in the middle of the day on June 24, the navigator “led” many people to the Shchurovsky bridge near Kolomna. Which, of course, also “got up”. It was reported that the Ministry of Emergency Situations and local authorities organized the supply of water, volunteers came to the track with water and hot meals.
“Well, there was no heat,” says Firuz, the driver of a heavy truck with Azerbaijani plates, who, according to the plan, was supposed to get to Moscow on Saturday evening, but was able to do this only on Monday by midday. “We stood on the M4 for a long time, then they told us: “The bridge is mined, get there any way you like, even by swimming!” I went to Kolomna, where they let in a teaspoon per hour. I also thought: if they mined it, it means that they can blow it up at any moment, and then it will not be possible to cross the Oka at all, Moscow will be cut off from the south.
Bridges on federal highways were blocked by the military and during Sunday, the restrictions were lifted (probably along with mines) only on Monday morning. One way or another, it turned out that the most reliable transport for communication with the south is now railways – throughout the entire history of June 24, there were no interruptions in the movement of trains to Rostov and other southern cities.
“We would be happy to transport by rail,” said Valentin Pavlov, who is responsible for logistics in one of the largest companies supplying dairy products. “But the infrastructure for the transportation of perishable products is destroyed, plus merciless tariffs, plus now the railway is clogged with containerized cargo from China, add at least two overloads to this … Do you understand why everyone switched to road transportation a long time ago?
Another problem on June 24 and 25 was intra-regional transportation in Kolomna and some other urban districts of the Moscow region. It turned out that the infrastructure of the districts (hospitals, government offices) is also tied to bridges across the Oka: some districts are located on both banks of the river. Fortunately, this time the bridges survived, and the restrictions were quickly lifted. Lucky.
Recall that on the same days, transport difficulties – this time more long-term – are observed in the south of Russia, on the border of Crimea and the Kherson region. After the temporary shutdown of one of the bridges on the Chongar Isthmus, the traffic flow slowed down, trucks get through the “land corridor” to and from Crimea with many hours of traffic jams.
Newspaper headline:
“The bridge was mined, swim to get there”
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