Businessman Andrei Hartley was driving his Ford Focus down Smolenskaya Ulitsa near the Kremlin last week when the black BMW with flashing blue lights started coming straight toward him.
The BMW had swerved into his lane to beat the rush-hour traffic. But Hartley stood his ground.
Then both cars stopped, bumper to bumper.
Hartley got out of his car, his digital camera recording a video of the encounter, and politely asked the government official sitting beside the driver to identify himself.
The befuddled official peered out of his open door for a moment before slamming it shut.
The BMW's driver, meanwhile, stormed around the car to Hartley and began to manhandle him. The driver of a nearby car quickly intervened to defend Hartley, forcing the BMW's driver to back off and return to his vehicle.
The official in the BMW turned out to be Vladimir Shevchenko, an adviser to President Dmitry Medvedev and longtime Kremlin chief of protocol to former President Boris Yeltsin.
Shevchenko has hotly dismissed the incident as a provocation, Russian News Service reported.
But Hartley, who posted the now much-viewed video of the incident on the Internet (see below), said he had acted because "I had had enough."
"To be honest, I am somewhat afraid now," Hartley told Moskovsky Komsomolets. "But we've got to do something, right?"
Hartley, a partner at Moscow-based Global Foods, which supplies meat products to restaurants, is winning a lot of support from fellow drivers who also are fed up with cars with flashing blue lights that snarl traffic and have been blamed for a growing number of accidents.
His in-your-face example is inspiring drivers to take a stand. The Union of Car Owners, a public motorists' rights watchdog, will kick off a protest Saturday in which drivers will be encouraged to follow cars with flashing lights and honk their horns. The organization is also printing bumper stickers reading "Servant of the people, take off your flashing lights!" said Sergei Kanayev, head of the organization's Moscow branch.
Kanayev vowed that the protest would continue until officials removed the flashing lights.
"This is not some kind of 'Fight Against Corruption Month,'" he said. "We need this situation to come to an end."
Some drivers are not waiting for the weekend to begin their protests. A male caller told Ekho Moskvy radio on Monday that drivers on a street in eastern Moscow had refused to allow a car with flashing lights to return to the right lane after it pulled into the oncoming lane to bypass a traffic jam.
Alexander Pikulenko, a journalist with Ekho Moskvy and an advocate of motorists' rights, advised drivers to stop and turn on their emergency lights when cars with flashing lights tried to force them out of the way. This way, he said, the official would remain stuck in traffic and the driver would avoid being fined by the traffic police.
Under the law, refusing to give way to a car with a flashing light is punishable by a fine of up to 300 rubles ($10).
The punishment is much harsher for drivers who block ambulances, firetrucks or police cars; they can lose their licenses for 18 months.
Ordinary drivers said their complaints were valid. Under the law, officials with flashing lights can only violate traffic rules when "absolutely necessary," and only if their maneuvers do not threaten other motorists.
In addition, only 967 cars in Russia belonging to senior officials are supposed to be equipped with flashing lights under a 2006 government decree. (Incidentally, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill qualified for a flashing light, while the leaders of other faiths do not enjoy this privilege.)
But at least 1,197 cars with flashing lights are driving on Moscow's streets, according to readers' photos submitted to the web sites of Silver Rain radio and Vedomosti over the past two months. Some of the photos even depict different cars with the same license plates.
Interestingly, among the photos collected by Vedomosti was one of Shevchenko's BMW driving in the wrong lane. ?
Vedomosti —? which is supporting the protest by the Union of Car Owners together with Silver Rain — plans to file a request with the government to explain why more than 967 cars have flashing lights.
The Union of Car Owners is calling for the traffic law to be changed to limit the use of flashing lights to cars accompanied by a police cortege, which is how Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin travel around the city.
Georgy Satarov, head of the anti-corruption Indem think tank and a former adviser to Yeltsin, said the public campaign shows a change in citizens' attitude toward officials.
“The middle class, which has a bit of self-respect, is fighting the thuggish behavior of the authorities,” he told The Moscow Times.
Last month, Novaya Gazeta published a list of more than a dozen recent traffic accidents involving cars with federal and regional officials and businessmen, some of which resulted in deaths and serious injuries. Perhaps the most notorious took place in Moscow in February, when the Mercedes of LUKoil vice president Anatoly Barkov collided with a car carrying two female doctors, killing both. An investigation into the crash is ongoing.
Satarov said the impact of the drivers' campaign “will depend upon the scale of the protest,” but noted that previous campaigns by drivers have yielded results.
Late last year, the Union of Car Owners and other drivers' groups successfully lobbied against a United Russia-backed initiative to raise taxes for car owners.
Some drivers, however, believe that the campaign will be hard to win. “This has always been a part of the Russian character," said German Prostov, a 38-year-old Russian who works for Microsoft in Seattle and has driven for years in both Russia and the United States. "During tsarist times, rich landowners drove horse buggies with a bunch of bells. Today there are flashing lights."