Video footage from a camera installed on the dashboard of Kuklina's car shows a gray minivan career into the left side of her Toyota Land Cruiser.
A member of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s motorcade slammed into a Kamchatka resident’s Toyota Land Cruiser, causing 319,000 rubles ($10,000) in damage, the victim said.
Medvedev’s spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova, confirmed to Russian News Service radio on Tuesday that a Federal Guard Service employee was responsible for the incident, blaming a punctured tire for the driver crashing into the stationary vehicle.
The victim, Olga Kuklina, told the Argumenty i Fakty weekly that she was returning home from relatives with her 6-month-old daughter when the incident occurred, in early July.
A recording by Kuklina’s dashboard camera shows a police car with a blue flashing light racing past her SUV before she pulls over and waits for more oncoming vehicles to pass.
After the first set of police cars pass, a gray minivan careens into the left side of Kuklina’s vehicle with a loud crash, spraying the SUV’s side-view mirror over the hood. (The recording is on The Moscow Times’ website.)
Kuklina told Argumenty i Fakty that Federal Guard Service officials then pulled up and told her that she was to blame for the damage caused.
When they saw the video camera, they reportedly said, “If this [expletive] didn’t have it all on tape, we’d arrange another 1937 for her,” presumably referring to the Stalinist terror in the year 1937.
Of the 319,000 rubles’ worth of damage caused in the crash, Kuklina said her insurance company had agreed to pay 120,000 rubles. The remainder she will have to seek in court, the weekly said.
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