The news of the suspension of production at the major Russian car manufacturer AvtoVAZ in Togliatti, on the Volga River, neither comes as a surprise nor dominates the front pages. Considering the current economic situation this is quite logical: AvtoVAZ is not the first car maker in Russia to recur to this option. The Ford Sollers plant in Vsevolozhsk, the Volkswagen plant in Kaluga, Peugeot, Citroen, Mitsubishi, and other automobile manufacturers have suspended production at one time or another. It is obvious that even Putin’s KGB friend Sergei Chemezov, the current CEO of the Rostec state corporation that controls more than 700 machine building and defense plants in the country, including AvtoVAZ, cannot force Russia’s drastically impoverished population to buy new cars. It is also clear that the problem lies not with AvtoVAZ itself—whose Lada cars are world-famous for their low price and their simplicity—but with the overall crisis in the Russian economy that is suffering because of low oil prices and Western economic sanctions imposed in response to the military aggression against Ukraine.
Despite the assurances by Putin’s press secretary in early 2015 that “the fall in sales will be followed by a rapid growth,” the situation so far is the opposite. According to the Russian Auto Dealers Association, the automobile market has lost 40 percent of its model range in the last two years—and that is not the limit. Even the once-popular and inexpensive Ford Focus dropped out of the top 25 models sold in Russia, and the top rankings are now held by the cheapest cars that are two decades behind the 2016 European economy-class vehicles in terms of quality and technology. Even the sales of these “naked” cars are Read More “Barefoot Toward an Empire”
