One interesting detail that the journalist reports is that the Zello Internet system, which drivers use in scheduling their loads and which Moscow said it was blocking, continues to function entirely normally. One driver said that “we also thought they had prohibited it but for now everything is working normally.” From the Zello network, the Sverdlovsk group learned that 300 truckers from Udmurtia and 80 from Oryol oblast joined the strike the day before the journalist arrived. They also learned that truckers in Chita in the Transbaikal and a major transshipment point for trade between Russia and China have now struck as well.The truckers in the camp he visited, Pushkaryev says, are increasingly well-organized, they receive food from supporters and prepare it for truckers who have parked their vehicles, and they have organized a system of around-the-clock guards in order to prevent the police or other force structures from staging a provocation, something many expect and fear.
So far, the Sverdlovsk authorities have not tried to intervene to stop the strike or to prevent the strikers from seeking to get others to join their ranks, the Znak journalist says; but they are working to intimidate people by photographing the trucks parked in the encampment and taking down the license plate numbers.Reportedly, the China authorities are threatening to bring in Chinese drivers to replace the Russian strikers. If true and if that happens, it could touch off an explosion.

And in what is clearly a warning to any of the powers that be who may be thinking about dispersing the truckers by force, he continued, “as soon as the first blood is shed, a real revolution will begin.”The truckers say that they will “stand to the end because there is no sense to do anything else.” They are angry that the authorities won’t talk to them. And some of them are prepared for a more violent outcome: “Speaking honestly,” one driver said, “I am ready for a real revolution, one based on force.”
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