Men in police uniform recently stopped two Polish truck drivers on the highway just outside of Moscow and asked them to get into the back of a police car for a routine document check. The truckers told the Polish Embassy later that they did not suspect anything until they were in the car.


In fact, the "policemen" were highway bandits. They drew guns on the truckers, took them to nearby woods and held them for four hours while they unloaded the truck's cargo of electronic goods, the drivers said.


This was not an isolated case. The trick of posing as policemen to commit attacks on the open road has grown into a serious and embarrassing problem for Russian police, according to the Russian Interior Ministry.


In April after receiving complaints from trucking companies and the Polish government, the Interior Ministry issued a standing order warning that the attacks had spread to three regions around Moscow on the main highways to the west.


As a special measure, the order even allowed international truckers not to stop when Russian highway patrols try to pull them over. Police admit that many of the bandits who use police disguises are retired or have obtained uniforms from the police but they deny that serving police are involved.


Crime on Russia's highways is not confined to a few bandits disguising themselves as police.


Russian police say armed bandits robbed 2,500 trucks in 1993. A police spokesman said about 20 or 30 of the attacks were on foreign truckers. He could not give figures for previous years but said that the crime rate was up sharply.


The attacks, police said, ranged from basic extortion, where truckers were stopped on the highway at gunpoint and ordered to provide money, to kidnapping. In the worst incident, a Polish driver was found murdered near the border at Smolensk last February.


Trucking is not a soft business in any country. But the rise in crime on Russia's roads is causing concern to many international companies involved in the trucking business.


Officials of Western insurance companies say they have refused to provide coverage on loads in the Commonwealth of Independent States and many trucking companies simply refuse to deliver goods to dangerous areas such as southern Russia, the Urals and the highway to Kazakhstan.


Most now insist that trucks be accompanied by armed guards and operate in tight convoys with radio satellite communications similar to that used in Bosnia for humanitarian convoys.


Vasily Zhuravlyov, head of the GAI traffic police investigation department, said in an interview that there are some justifications for these fears on the part of international businesses.


Law and order on Russia's roads has deteriorated just as badly as in other areas of Russian society. The simple reason is that the consumer goods cargo on Russian highways is too tempting for criminal groups to ignore. Truckloads of alcohol, cigarettes or electrical components are often worth up to $500,000 on the black market.


"They are very much a happy hunting ground for criminals," Zhuravlyov said.


Organized crime is clearly involved in the problem on Russia's roads but private security firms and police agree that there are few violent attacks.


Most reported thefts of whole trucks are actually run-of-the-mill frauds and deceptions. A common tactic is for a driver of a shady trucking company to do a deal with a criminal group to share out a cargo and then report the loss as a hijacking.


Arkady Kurshin of the Russian Association of International Truckers said that even though crime was a growing problem for trucking in the CIS, traders have not been deterred and trucking volume rose 30 percent last year.


He said trucking was still safer than moving goods by rail which involved long delays at stations and much more scope for pilfering.


The basic strategy police and truckers have adopted to combat the attacks is to create a network of safe stopping points along main roads, starting with the Warsaw-Moscow highway.


Stopping to rest is a vulnerable time for truck drivers. Stopping by the side of the open road invites attack from roving bandits while many of the organized truck stops are controlled by racketeers.


The city of Moscow recently opened the first of the new truck stops on a vacant lot near Krasnopresnenskaya Naberezhnaya. At a cost of 40 Deutsche marks (about $25) a night, it offers a dusty enclosure surrounded by concrete walls, guarded by dogs and armed police but with no shower, toilet or other facilities.


Truckers said they were happy even for this as they had all heard stories about attacks on the roads and some had experienced them.