Earlier this week, a man living in Omsk named Eduard Belousov uploaded a video to YouTube titled “Omsk: The ‘Roads’ (As I See Them).” The short video features a montage of Omsk’s cavernous potholes, flooded streets, and broken down cars.
“There I was with my camera under my arm, and my patience simply gave out,” Belousov says in the caption on his YouTube video, which is snappily edited and set to suspenseful music.
On Change.org, a petition addressed to Vladimir Putin and Omsk Governor Viktor Nazarov, asking for road repairs in the region, has attracted more than 38,000 signatures.
“Omsk: The ‘Roads’ (As I See Them)”
Eduard Belousov
Like many cities in Russia, the potholes and generally lousy state of local roads make for bizarre happenings. In the past several days alone, several Omsk locals have uploaded to the Internet videos showing passengers aboard buses and trolleys forced to exit their vehicles, in order to push them out of potholes.
Passengers push their bus out from a pothole in Omsk (March 22, 2016)
ChP Omsk
The Omsk-based website bk55.ru recently published a dashcam video filmed by a local city councilman, in which the official at one point philisophizes, “Water on Omsk’s roads. It’s awful. You never know what it’s hiding.”
Katya Arkhipova
Just yesterday, Omsk social media users uploaded footage of two young men rafting in a flooded local street.
In a boat down Omsk’s roads
REGIK55 Omsk