Dozens of trucks from southern Russia and the Caucasus are lined up along Varshavskoye Shosse just outside Moscow, stranded by the city police, while tons of fruit and vegetables rot in the sun, turning the whole area into a stinking dump.


"More than half the tomatoes and about two tons of watermelons from each 15-ton truck are rotten," said Suleiman Akhmedov of Dagestan, who has been stranded outside Moscow for more than a month.


Nikolai Turin of the Moscow traffic police said the city police together with OMON officers stop all loaded vehicles as they enter the city limits to check their trading licenses. Any driver whose papers are not in order is kept outside the city limits and forced to sell his produce at wholesale prices to Moscow traders.


Mamed Musayev from Dagestan said the 3 million rubles ($670) he could get for his two loads of watermelons was less than half what he would receive at a city market.


"Besides, we have to pay 100,000 rubles daily to the Moscow police for our illegal parking here and more than 200,000 rubles to local racketeers," he added.


Lida Abilova, from the Krasnoye Znamya collective farm in the Rostov region said if she does not pay off the racketeers, they will break the truck's headlights at night.


"I feel a real pity for these people," said Turin of the city traffic police. "There are no camping sites and the hotels are so expensive that they have to sleep in their trucks."