Here’s a little story we picked up on the RIA Novosti tourism news website. A significant part of the income of Russia’s new client statelet, Abkhazia, comes from the Russian tourists who visit the balmy shores of the Black Sea. Since they are considerably wealthier than their hosts, they are easy marks for the local traffic police, who stop them with their white batons at every turn to shake them down for a few hundred rubles – payable on the spot – for various petty traffic infractions, real or imagined. Well, no more. Russian motorists will now enjoy the same sort of immunity drivers of diplomatic vehicles do – they will be able to speed, ignore traffic signals, and drive drunk in Abkhazia with complete impunity. Abkazia’s president revealed that this is all part of some exotic and previously unheard-of police mandate to “help people”. We predict a sharp rise in traffic deaths this summer.

Bagapsh prohibits Abkhazian police from stopping cars with RF license plates

SUKHUMI, 29 apr – RIA Novosti. President of Abkhazia Sergey Bagapsh has given an instruction to the head of the Ministry of internal affairs of the republic not to stop cars with Russian license plates without weighty grounds for this.