Siberian city of Ulan-Ude to spend $2.7 million on buses featuring Putin quotes

The Mayor’s Office in the city of Ulan-Ude (located in Eastern Siberia) has announced two tenders for the purchase of buses featuring quotes from Russian President Vladimir Putin, reports the local publication Baikal-Daily. 

The tenders, which were posted on the government’s procurement website on July 27, outline requirements for purchasing 42 buses for a total sum of around 200 million rubles (about $2.7 million). The buses themselves must have a capacity of 50 people and be equipped to accommodate passengers with disabilities. 

The procurement documents include attached files with mock-ups of the buses. The designs include local landmarks from Ulan-Ude and quotes attributed to Putin, such as “The People’s [Narodny] Budget is the people’s initiative” and “The Far East is a key area of development.” The final designs are set to be agreed upon after the contracts are concluded.

According to Taiga.Info, the actual quotes from Putin that are set to appear on the buses have yet to be publicly announced. The independent television channel TV Rain reports that Putin called the development of the Far East “one of the key areas of the country’s development” during a press conference in December 2019. TV Rain’s journalists were unable to find the source of the quote about the “People’s Budget.”

Along with a number of other Russian regions, Buryatia, where Ulan-Ude is located, was allocated 300 million rubles — about $4 million — from the federal budget within the framework of a project called the “People’s Budget” (Narodny Budget). The residents of Buryatia voted on how to spend this money during the constitutional plebiscite on July 1. In Ulan-Ude, the regional capital, local residents voted in favor of buying new buses for the city.