Regarding the practicalities of relying on greencard insurance in Russia.

This summer (2011) whilst importing my bike through Vladivostok I teamed up with two Croations who had European Greencards with Russian coverage. This was their experience:
- Customs at Vladivostok took a lot of convincing by a Russian speaking friend before they would believe that the Croations had any coverage. The basic problem was because the document was (a) not in Russian and (b) the officers had not seen a "green card" before and did not understand this multi-country insurance. Without valid insurance Customs will not release the bikes. After about two hours, and mainly I think to get rid of them, customs accepted the "green card" and agreed to release their bikes.
- The locals (customs officers, local bikers and our shipping agent) pointed out to the Croations that they would need to repeat this arguing everytime they were stopped by the traffic police for a document check.

The net result was the Croations after a lot of persuading by locals ended up buying local Russian insurance to avoid possible future problems (which is cheap at $20 for 1 month or $50 for three months).

I thinkthey did the right thing; document checks by the highway police are common, in the three months I was in Russia I was stopped 6 - 8 times for these. These were all friendly but in each case they wanted to check:
- Insurance (no problem mine was in Russian)
- Driving licence (no problem - International licence was in Russian)
- Bike papers (sometimes a bit of pantomine explaining it because it was only in English - but because the Plate number and date were clear it was always quickly accepted.

With a non-Russian language greencard I'm certain at least some of these stops would have taken many hours instead of the minutes they did and might well have involved a trip to the station. So bottom line yes Russia is now part of the green card system but coming from the east there appears to be no knowledge of it and if you want to rely on it plan to spend a lot of time explaining yourself (and your Russian better be good).

Hope this helps.

__________________
Martin

finally back on the road again


http://awayonmybike.blogspot.com/