A Drunken Crash, a Dead Passenger, and a Mother’s Shield of Power
In Russia’s endless road ballad of dust, vodka and official privilege, a familiar refrain returns: the drunken son at the wheel and the well-placed mother cleaning up the wreckage.
The story this time revolves around 31-year-old Anton Gusev, a man already stripped once of his driving license for alcohol-related antics. Deciding, apparently, that hangovers weren’t quite enough thrill for one lifetime, he climbed back behind the wheel. The inevitable followed: his Volkswagen Golf ploughed head-on into a stationary semi-trailer. When the wreckage was pried open, 22-year-old Valeria was found lifeless inside, a young woman who likely imagined she would be home that night rather than becoming another line in the grim ledger of Russian traffic fatalities.
And then comes the pivotal figure of this drama: the mother. Not a stay-at-home bystander but a high-ranking official within the Federal Tax Service’s Vorozhen division, a woman accustomed to orchestrating bankruptcies and balancing debts. A perfect storm of dynastic dysfunction.
What shocked locals wasn’t the drunk young man who killed someone. That, in Russia, is as routine as the samovar steaming in the kitchen corner. Nor was it particularly startling that no criminal case has yet been opened and that Gusev walked straight out of the hospital rather than into a holding cell. When your mother carries a state inspector’s briefcase, life tends to resemble a VIP pass. The real surprise, whispered with a mix of disdain and irony, was that the scion of privilege was driving not a German luxury barge, but a Volkswagen Golf.
