Russia Paints Its Fuel Truck as Lumber and Locks Up the Witness

A resident of Kerch filmed a fuel truck at the edge of the city disguised as an ordinary lumber shipment. Authorities in occupied Crimea detained him for exposing and discrediting the military, thereby confirming exactly what he had filmed. The background is a fuel shortage accompanied by rationing and a black market!

Security forces in Crimea detained a resident of Kerch because on June 12 he filmed a fuel truck leaving the city disguised as an ordinary cargo truck. The accusation is that he exposed and discredited the Russian military, and he was forced to explain himself on camera. His offense, in one sentence, was that he looked. The detention was reported by Oleg Kryuchkov, an adviser to the head of Crimea. The man had exposed and discredited the soldiers, he said, and revealed to the enemy the methods and means by which both the Ministry of Defense and the civilian authorities of occupied Crimea were trying to prevent a transportation blockade of the regions.

The case centers on a video that appeared on social media on the morning of June 12. It shows a fuel truck disguised as an ordinary truck with wooden side panels, or whose cargo bed had been painted so that from above the load resembled stacked boards. According to The Insider, the vehicle was filmed at the entrance to the populated part of Kerch from the direction of the Crimean Bridge. A voice off camera claimed that a military fuel truck was passing by. By announcing the detention of the person who filmed it, Crimean authorities confirmed exactly that. Whoever defends a disguise admits there was a disguise, and whoever prosecutes proof that something was meant to remain hidden supplies that proof himself. The mask did not fall when the man filmed it but when they detained him for doing so.

At present, according to TASS, evidence is being collected in order to hold the individual accountable under the law. Which statute he is accused of violating remains unknown. They have the guilty party before they can name the crime. RIA Krym also released a video of the detention. In it, the man was forced to explain himself on camera and said that at the exit from Kerch he had overtaken a military fuel truck of unusual appearance, filmed it, and later sent the video to a friend abroad. In that final half sentence likely lies the real offense, that the image left the country and that the outside world was allowed a look inside.

Reports about disguised fuel logistics come at a time when gasoline is becoming scarce in Crimea and several Russian regions. At the beginning of June, sales were restricted in several places across Russian territory as well as occupied Crimea and the occupied section of Luhansk region. The peninsula was hit hardest, where AI-95 gasoline was limited to no more than twenty liters per person. Alongside that, a black market emerged where gasoline changed hands for around 250 rubles per liter.

What emerges is a picture that reveals the logic of this state in full. It paints a fuel truck to look like lumber in order to conceal the shortage that forced it to do so and then locks up the person who noticed the paint. A wood grain pattern covering fuel is the small lie placed over the larger one, that a wartime economy is running dry while still reporting victory. In the end, such a state fears the witness more than the empty tank, and it finds it easier to arrest the eye than to solve the shortage. The man from Kerch did nothing except see and show, and precisely because that was enough to declare him an enemy, he turned out to be right.

To be continued ...