A teenager driving a Zhiguli was killed after losing control of his car on a slippery road and crashing into a Kremlin-owned BMW in southern Moscow, police said.
Albert Salchak, 19, a first-year student at the Russian Academy of Transport, was killed instantly in the crash late Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Viktor Khrekov Lifenews.ru.
The driver of the BMW was not hurt although the car was totaled, Khrekov said.
Lifenews initially reported that the BMW is used by presidential adviser Dzhakhan Pollyeva, citing police. But Gazeta.ru , citing the Blue Buckets traffic protest group, that the car now serves Eve Vasilyevskaya, head of the presidential records office.
Vasilyevskaya, an aide to Dmitry Medvedev before his presidency started in 2008, replaced Pollyeva, who had served as former President Vladimir Putin's main speechwriter, in October 2009.
Khrekov did not say who was behind the wheel at the time of the crash.
The collision took place around midnight Thursday on Varshavskoye Shosse, not far from the commuter train platform Nizhniye Kotly, after Salchak — whose car bore a license plate reading "666" — crossed into the oncoming lane.
The BMW was equipped with a flashing blue light, but it was switched off at the time, Khrekov told Lifenews.
One witness told the tabloid news site that immediately after the collision, the BMW's driver removed the flashing light and license plates from the car.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin in an with Ekho Moskvy late Wednesday said cars with flashing blue lights "have the right to violate traffic rules if they are traveling for the needs of the service."
Even then, traffic police register the violation and send the car owner a bill with a fine, as well as hold a "minimal working probe," Sobyanin said.
As of today, the city's traffic police have issued about 250 fines to drivers of service cars, including ones with flashing blue lights.
