Epress.am News from Armenia
Russian police arrested some 1,300 people Saturday in Moscow city and the region in a bid to prevent gatherings of Russian nationalists and Caucasians which have already sparked deadly violence, AP reports.
“The police prevented several attempted non-authorized gatherings in the Moscow region,” regional police spokesperson Evgeny Gildeev was quoted as saying by the Itar-Tass news agency.
“As part of these preventative measures to ensure public order, 808 people have been detained in police stations,” he said, without specifying whether the people were nationalists or Caucasians.
In the city of Moscow, some 500 right-wingers marched in a park near the Ostankino television headquarters shouting slogans such as “Russia for the Russians,” an AFP photographer at the scene reported.
Hundreds of riot police descended on the park, after internet messages called for a rally at Ostankino to protest media coverage which had described the right-wingers as “fascists.”
There were no confrontations with police, the AFP photographer said.
“Nearly all the participants (in the march) were arrested,” city police spokesperson Viktor Biryukov told Russian news agencies. He added that most of some 500 people arrested in Moscow were minors.
Questioned about the number of teenagers taking part in the far-right rallies, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told Russian television that he thought it was a “disturbing sign,” that it was necessary to “work with the youth,” saying that they were not “a lost generation.”
On Dec. 11, thousands of extreme-rightists and football supporters battled police near the Kremlin, where they had gathered to protest after a supporter was killed in a fight with Caucasians from Muslim southern Russia.
Moscow’s mayor had raised the city’s alert level Friday as police vowed to move against any gatherings with force.
A sharp spike in racial violence this month has seen almost daily reports of attacks against ethnic minorities by small groups of young men.