Show that you're on close terms with Moscow." How regional authorities are trying to fight the fuel crisis

"Show that you're on close terms with Moscow." How regional authorities are trying to fight the fuel crisis

Regional authorities, faced with the gasoline crisis, are being forced to copy one another’s successful practices for distribution and eliminating queues, and also to use all their connections in Moscow to get ahead of colleagues in the scramble for fuel, sources told Verstka.

“And you have to move faster and faster, because there’s less and less gasoline. And people know that the most effective method is to show the public that you're on close terms with Moscow and that soon they’ll provide everything. Though there are also other, more exotic methods, like showing up at the queues and ‘being with the people,’” says an official from the Central Federal District.

According to an official in one of the Siberian regions, simple reports to Moscow quickly stopped being enough to obtain fuel.

“Governors are running around trying to prove that, условно, we here are no worse than wheat in Stavropol. Priority is being given to the army, heavy industry, power plants, and farmers. Oh, and emergency services too, of course, so that we don’t burn up here in the fires,” he says.

Personal connections with relevant federal officials and top managers of major oil companies, as well as “their own people in the ministries, State Duma deputies, and other lobbyists,” quickly entered these “office races,” regional officials say.

Read on the Verstka website about how the fuel crisis turned out to resemble the COVID pandemic (with VPN):

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