Translated material
Got it sorted out the European way
More than a thousand people were detained in Moscow
In Moscow yesterday, unprecedented security measures were taken due to the threat of a repeat of the riots that occurred on December 11 on Manezhnaya Square. This time, the main events unfolded at the Kievsky railway station and the nearby Evropeisky shopping center, where people from the southern republics allegedly intended to carry out their retaliatory action yesterday. Football fans and nationalists who took part in the massacre on Manezhnaya Square regarded this as a challenge and also called on their comrades to come to the “European”.Fortunately, no new clashes occurred, but it was a huge effort for law enforcement officers. In total, about 3 thousand employees of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, riot police and internal troops were involved in the “preventive” measures, who were on duty at the Kievsky railway station and neighboring metro stations from early morning until late evening. All day long, in the area and at metro stations, there were widespread checks of suspicious people, which included almost all young people, both Slavic in appearance and southerners. At the same time, everyone was detained who had not only penknives in their pockets, but in general any objects that could be used as weapons, or simply those young people who showed any activity. As a result, yesterday, according to various sources, from 800 to 1207 people were delivered to police departments, from whom about 200 knives, pieces of reinforcement, batons and even one samurai sword were confiscated.
Already in the evening, several hundred people, shouting nationalist slogans, tried to break through the police cordons, but were quickly dispersed and detained. Along the way, unofficial information appeared that scattered clashes between nationalists and Caucasians allegedly occurred in other areas of the city and in total about 30 people were injured, but the Central Internal Affairs Directorate did not confirm this.
Information that Caucasians gathered to rally on the square of the Kievsky railway station on Wednesday evening appeared on the RuNet almost immediately after the rally of football fans and nationalists on Manezhnaya Square. Then more than 5 thousand people gathered in the center of Moscow to honor the memory of Spartak fan Yegor Sviridov, who died in a fight with the southerners. However, the event escalated into unprecedented riots. First, the crowd began shouting nationalist slogans, raising their arms in a fascist salute, then began beating all the Caucasians who were nearby, and then turned their anger on the policemen who stood up for them. Moreover, the beatings of non-Russians then continued in the subway. As a result, more than 30 people were injured, including several police officers. And 65 people were detained: reports of administrative offenses were drawn up against them and released. Only two days later, 11 criminal cases were opened, but none of them related to inciting national hatred or discord, although the action was quite obvious. All acts of the radicals were classified as hooliganism or harm to health. Only yesterday the Prosecutor General's Office demanded that cases be opened on the facts of mass riots on grounds of racial hatred.
All messages that appeared on the Internet about planned retaliatory actions by Caucasians and counter-actions by nationalists both in law enforcement agencies and in national diasporas in Moscow were called provocations. Nevertheless, the security forces responded to them. So, on Monday, the police completely closed the same Manezhnaya Square, at the same time closing the Okhotny Ryad shopping center ahead of time. But as a result, no one showed up there. The police responded to reports of possible protests by both Caucasians and nationalists on December 15 at the Kievsky station by mobilizing almost all available forces.
Already from 7 am, buses with riot police and internal troops began arriving at Kievskaya Square. Support arrived throughout the day, and by 6 pm, when the action was scheduled, more than a thousand law enforcement officers had already gathered in the square. They organized a cordon around the Evropeisky shopping center. About 30 buses and armored riot police trucks were stationed on the dividing strip between the Kievsky railway station and the shopping center. In addition, workers moved metal barriers to the entrance to the shopping complex, and stall sellers were asked to close early. All the flower stalls, which are kept here mainly by immigrants from the Caucasus, were not open at all yesterday, and the windows of the beer tents were covered with black bags.
In addition, impressive forces were concentrated in the Smolenskaya metro area, which was announced as a gathering place for nationalists, as well as in Manezhnaya and Red Squares. Entrances from all adjacent alleys and streets were also blocked. Increased security measures have been taken in all district police departments. All capital's railway and bus stations were taken under control on Wednesday morning. Particular attention was paid to trains and buses arriving from the North Caucasus republics. Almost the entire center of Moscow, and especially the area of the Kievsky railway station, looked like the site of upcoming hostilities.
For a long time, everything was calm at Evropeisky, and the situation began to heat up only at five o’clock in the evening, when football fans began to approach the square. In total, about 300 people gathered there, mostly 14- to 15-year-old teenagers, among whom there were many girls wearing scarves with football symbols. Then it was decided to close the shopping center. However, there were no Caucasians at the scene - only about 20 people, under police guard, were taken out of the "European" and escorted to a bus, which took them to a safe place.
For about half an hour, the young people gathered in the square stood or walked among the police ranks, onlookers and journalists, and it was impossible to understand who came to take part in the action and who was just curious. All this time, riot police pulled out the most suspicious people from the crowd, in their opinion, and escorted them onto buses. In order to be detained, sometimes it was enough just to stand with a bottle of beer in your hand or shout something - sometimes even completely harmless. Some were also detained at the metro, on the approach to the square. Almost all young people at the Kievskaya station were stopped by police officers and searched. Those who were found with knives or brass knuckles were immediately taken to buses. At the same time, arrests took place in other areas of central Moscow.
After 18.00 the nationalists became more active. Shouting “Russians, forward,” they tried to break through the cordon, but were quickly repulsed. A third of them were immediately detained, and the situation calmed down again for a while. But a few minutes later the crowd set off along 2nd Bryansky Lane towards Bolshaya Dorogomilovskaya Street. At first, police officers simply accompanied the column, and when some participants in the procession began shouting nationalist slogans, law enforcement officers immediately detained several of the most active ones and pushed the crowd away from the roadway. As a result, no clashes occurred - after 19.00 most people began to disperse from the square. In the metro, however, for some time there were small groups of young people trying to chant, not very unanimously: “Russians, forward,” but they soon dispersed.
Although mass unrest was avoided, yesterday there were still some incidents. In different areas of Moscow, mainly in the center, separate clashes took place, as a result of which, according to unofficial data, 30 people were injured. In particular, as the leader of the Slavic Power movement, Dmitry Demushkin, told Vremya Novostei, in the morning there were two fights between supporters of the movement and people from the Caucasus at the Kievsky railway station and at the Airport metro station. “Several Chechens attacked our observers who were on duty at the station yesterday,” he said. - In the end, they shot at each other with traumatic pistols, but no one was seriously injured. The same thing happened at the Airport station.” However, the capital's police department did not confirm this information. At the same time, another incident occurred on the Podolsk-Moscow train. As a source in law enforcement agencies said, a group of 20 young people, shouting nationalist slogans, attacked a 20-year-old native of the North Caucasus, who was hospitalized with injuries at the Botkin Hospital.
According to the capital's police, yesterday a total of 1,207 people were detained in different areas of Moscow. This is almost 20 times more than during the rally on Manezhnaya Square, although its consequences were much more serious. Most of them were detained in the metro.
Yesterday, First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman, speaking in the Federation Council, said that the real cause of the riots on Manezhnaya Square due to the murder of Yegor Sviridov was not a national issue at all, but a domestic conflict, aggravated by unlawful actions of the investigation. “The conflict itself had an ordinary everyday basis - the young people did not divide which of them should take the taxi first,” said Mr. Buksman. “But the investigator artificially divided the criminal case - he singled out the murder of one person, the rest of the incident he opened a separate criminal case and released all the suspects. This was a completely illegal decision of the investigator, and it, in fact, led to mass riots.” According to Buksman, this decision of the investigator has already been canceled at the request of the prosecutor.