THOUSANDS of Russian motorists staged a national protest yesterday in support of a Siberian railway worker jailed for causing a car crash that killed a senior government official.

Oleg Shcherbinsky was driving his Toyota with his wife and two children last August when a Mercedes carrying Mikhail Yevdokimov, the Governor of the eastern region of Altay, raced up behind him. The Mercedes clipped the Toyota, skidded off the road and hit a tree, killing the governor, his driver and bodyguard.

Mr Shcherbinsky was sentenced to four years in prison on February 3 for failing to get out of the way of the speeding Mercedes, which police said had been travelling at more than 90mph. The judge ruled that the defendant should have pulled over after seeing the limousine’s flashing blue lights, known as migalki. But he has since become something of a folk hero for Russians fed up with officials and businessmen speeding through the streets in expensive cars, violating traffic regulations with impunity.

The case is seen as a metaphor for Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where critics say that a political elite is accumulating greater power as ordinary citizens’ rights are eroded.

Only top officials in cars with migalki have special privileges on Russian roads, but thousands of businessmen and mafiosi have acquired the lights on the black market. Ordinary motorists, by contrast, are regularly pulled over by traffic police for real or imaginary offences, and have to pay on-the-spot fines.

On Saturday more than 1,000 people joined a demonstration in support of Mr Shcherbinsky in his hometown of Barnaul, in Altay. Yesterday the protests spread to 21 cities across Russia. In Moscow about 1,000 people gathered in cars bearing stickers and posters protesting against official abuse of power on the roads. “I don’t want to be next!” said one sticker. “Officials — if you ’re in a hurry, take the Metro!” said another.

Natalya Kosnikovskaya, 35, said that she wanted to stand up for her right to travel safely with her disabled four-year-old son, Bogdan. “These officials with their sirens and flashing lights make us feel like second-class citizens,” she told The Times. “My son is disabled. He has more of a right than them to be driven around like this.”

The protests were ostensibly about officials violating traffic rules, but they had far broader political undertones. Many cars were decorated with orange ribbons reminiscent of the Orange Revolution that toppled the post-Soviet elite in Ukraine in 2004.

The Kremlin has vowed to crush any attempts to start a similar uprising in Russia, and imposed restrictions last month on non-governmental organisations that it fears could stir up protests. That could spell trouble for Freedom of Choice, the motoring organisation that organised yesterday’s protests.

The organisation came to prominence last May when it lobbied successfully to prevent a proposed ban on right-hand drive cars, many of which are imported from Japan.

Vyacheslav Lisenkov, of the organisation, said that the aims of the protests had been to get Mr Shcherbinsky released and to highlight officials abusing their power on the roads. “Oleg is the real victim here — a victim of those terrible officials who drive through our streets without rules or responsibility,” he said. “At any moment, any one of us could be in his place.”

The demonstrations were supported by local groups that blocked roads a year ago to protest at a plan to replace welfare benefits with cash payments. Word of the protests was spread via the internet and, in Moscow, by Silver Rain, the radio station that helped to organise a similar protest against official motorcades two years ago.

Authorities allowed the protests to go ahead but were determined to prevent them gathering momentum. In Moscow protest organisers had planned to drive slowly along the main thoroughfare that President Putin and other senior figures use to go between their dachas and the city centre. But as soon as the motorcade emerged on to the main road, the traffic police pulled over dozens of cars, saying that the protesters had violated traffic regulations.

Police pulled over The Times’s car for an imaginary traffic violation, and tried to stop a photographer taking pictures of others being stopped.

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