The Russian Football Championship match between Dynamo Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg was interrupted due to the behavior of the fans. A firecracker thrown from the sector with Zenit fans hit Dynamo goalkeeper Anton Shunin. The Zenit management did not admit guilt and threatened to remove the team from the Russian Championship if harsh sanctions were applied to it.

History of the conflict

Relations between Dynamo and Zenit fans have been difficult throughout the last decade. It cannot be said that fans of both teams used to love each other, but in the 1980s and 1990s they still tried to follow the unwritten rules, according to which, for example, foreign objects should not be used during fights. The aggravation occurred at the very end of the 1990s.

The first sign was the 1999 Russian Cup final, held in May at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium. Thanks to Alexander Panov's double, Zenit celebrated the victory, but the reason for the dissatisfaction of Dynamo fans was something else. In Moscow, at a match with the participation of the capital team, there were more fans of the visiting team - Dynamo fans considered themselves offended. They demonstrated this a month later - at the end of June 1999, when a match between the teams took place in Moscow as part of the Russian Championship. Both before and after the meeting, Moscow fans attacked Zenit fans with superior forces.

The turning point in the relationship between fans was April 2000, when the teams played a game in St. Petersburg as part of the national championship. Before the match, Dynamo fans attacked Zenit fans sitting in a cafe. As a result of the fight, 15-year-old St. Petersburg resident Vitaly Petukhov died. After this, fan relations deteriorated to the limit.

Throughout the 2000s, matches involving these teams were accompanied by clashes between fans and the so-called banner war. In 2005, during a fight in St. Petersburg, a Dynamo fan had his face burned by a burning fireball. In October 2008, appeared a banner “Your Yashin is dead, Dynamo is dead” in the stands of the St. Petersburg Petrovsky Stadium. His appearance caused a huge resonance, the St. Petersburg club was fined and punished by holding the match without spectators.

Dynamo fans did not remain in debt and hung banners that offended the feelings of the residents of besieged Leningrad. The chant “Crush the blockade survivors” became common; in response, St. Petersburg residents raised a portrait of Lavrentiy Beria with the inscription “You are paying for his sins.” The blue and white found something to answer by hanging at one of the games a portrait of Ksenia Sobchak , accompanied by the inscription “And you will never pay for her sins.”

Zenit fans during the match with Dynamo, 2009. Archive photo RIA Novosti, Alexey Danichev

In 2010, a meeting between Dynamo and Zenit took place on the eve of the anniversary of the death of Vitaly Petukhov. Moscow fans unfurled a banner on which the inscription “Happy Anniversary, guys” was accompanied by an image of a hand holding pieces of reinforcement. According to one version, a 15-year-old Zenit fan was beaten to death with rebar.

In April 2012, Dynamo and Zenit played a match in St. Petersburg. On one of the bridges along which a bus with players from the capital’s team was supposed to pass from Pulkovo airport, a banner was hung that insulted the memory of Lev Yashin.

In the current Russian Championship, the first game between Zenit and Dynamo was relatively calm. Fans of both teams burned fires and shouted insults at each other, but such fan behavior is considered quite normal.

Match in Khimki

On November 17, Dynamo and Zenit played a match as part of the 16th round of the Russian Championship. Even before the game, fans of the blue and white scattered photographs of the bread cards that residents of besieged Leningrad received during the war around the stadium.

The game itself was played with the advantage of the home team, and they deservedly took the lead in the 27th minute - Dynamo defender Vladimir Granat scored an accurate shot. In the first half, Zenit fans were located behind the Dynamo goal. Coins, lighters and firecrackers were periodically thrown at Anton Shunin. In the 38th minute, one of the firecrackers exploded near the goalkeeper.

The game was immediately interrupted, and while doctors provided assistance to the injured goalkeeper, Zenit fans chanted: “Shunin - p..s!” The referee took the teams off the field and decided not to resume the match.

The stand with the visiting fans was quickly surrounded by police - it seemed that the Zenit fans might get the worst of it. However, law enforcement officials detained 53 people, while the remaining fans calmly left the stadium.

Almost immediately the leaders of both teams came to the fore. Representatives of Dynamo demanded that the St. Petersburg team be punished to the fullest extent of the law and, in particular, that the Russian champions be given a technical defeat with a score of 0:3. In response, Zenit threatened that it would withdraw from the Russian Championship if harsh sanctions were applied to the club. The leaders of the St. Petersburg team did not take any blame for the incident, blaming Dynamo for the provocation. They say that tickets to the guest stands were distributed by the capital's club, and Muscovites crowded in and threw firecrackers at their own goalkeeper.

Ordinary Zenit fans did not lag behind the officials. “We have no need to do this, but it plays into the hands of the “garbage” people... They can only defeat us in their offices,” one of the St. Petersburg fans told Gazeta.ru. Some time after the game, a meeting took place between the leaders of fan associations of both clubs, at which Zenit fans again denied their involvement in the incident. If the person who threw the firecracker is still a member of the fan movement, then he will face punishment from the organization.

Finding the guilty

The police reported that among those detained there was also the direct “thrower” of the firecrackers at Shunin. According to law enforcement agencies, the illegal act was committed by a woman. It was reported that more than 20 condoms were found in the women's toilet in Khimki, which led to the conclusion that the girls had carried firecrackers inside themselves.

This method of delivering pyrotechnics to the stands was first discussed a few years ago. However, there was no evidence until two Zenit fans were detained at the stadium in Rostov in October 2011 for trying to carry fireworks in the back passage. In January 2012, it became known that Swiss fans were resorting to the help of their friends. So the police version of how the pyrotechnics got into the Khimki arena is completely credible.

While the police are searching for the person who threw a firecracker at the goalkeeper of the Russian national team, a discussion about the state of affairs at Russian stadiums has begun with renewed vigor. Almost no one doubts that Shunin suffered precisely from a Zenit fan - such is the reputation of football fans from the cultural capital of Russia. However, the head of the All-Russian Fans' Association (VOB), Alexander Shprygin, urged not to make all fans to blame for what happened. Like, in every herd there is a black sheep. According to him, blaming the fans is the easiest way out of the situation.

The incident at the stadium in Khimki occurred the day after the draft so-called “law on fans” was submitted to the State Duma. The need for such a law has been talked about for several years, but progress has only begun recently - on the eve of the 2018 World Cup, the Russian side needs to show that it is fighting aggression in the stands.

The adoption of the law was planned back in 2010. The original version suggested that for breaking the law during sporting events, fans could be subject to criminal penalties (up to six years in prison) and huge fines (up to 1 million rubles). However, then the matter stalled.

At the end of October 2012, the Ministry of Sports presented a bill concerning “ensuring public order and security during official sports competitions.” “Violent” fans are supposed to be punished with administrative arrest for 15 days, a fine (from 1 to 5 thousand rubles) or a ban on attending games for up to one year. Such a mitigation of penalties became possible thanks to the pressure of fans, whose attention was so valued by the former head of the RFU Sergei Fursenko .

Zenit fans during the match with Dynamo on November 17, 2012. Photo Kommersant, Dmitry Lebedev

It is possible that after what happened in Khimki, the “law on fans” will return to its original version. This conclusion can be drawn from the statement of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev , who demanded that such antics be prevented in the future.

The reaction of the current leadership of the RFU is indicative. According to unofficial information , upon learning about what had happened, the head of Russian football, Nikolai Tolstykh, immediately came to Khimki and gave a formal dressing down to everyone who was in one way or another responsible for holding the match. This behavior of the head of the RFU gives hope that this time the governing body of domestic football will not cave in under the pressure of Zenit, as happened in the past.

Almost immediately, the Zenit management launched an active information war against Dynamo (this also applies to threats to withdraw from the Russian Championship). appeared on the official website of Zenit On November 17, a statement , in which the club once again blamed the incident on Dynamo and the police, who failed to prevent those who brought pyrotechnics into the stadium.

The fate of Dynamo and Zenit will be decided by the Control and Disciplinary Committee (CDC) of the RFU. According to the existing regulations, both Muscovites and St. Petersburg residents can be punished. The FTC needs to decide whose fan the person who threw the firecracker at Shunin was.

The disciplinary regulations mean that Zenit fans are all those who were in the away stands. However, the St. Petersburg team is trying to do everything to prove that Dynamo fans could also be in the stands. If they really manage to prove this, and the CDC is still unable to determine who exactly threw the firecracker, then Dynamo will be punished. The guilty party faces a fine of 500 thousand rubles and holding up to five matches on a neutral field or in its own stadium with empty stands.

Against the backdrop of the ongoing discussion about the match in Khimki, the opinion Moscow, of the president of CSKA Evgeny Giner, stands out. According to him, there was no need to stop the game. They say that Shunin had to be replaced and the meeting continued. At the same time, the head of CSKA did not rule out the possibility that a provocation could occur in Khimki. I would really like to know whether Giner would have insisted on continuing the match with CSKA if, for example, Igor Akinfeev had been hit by a firecracker?

Smoke on the grass The match between Dynamo and Zenit was interrupted due to firecrackers