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Moscow clashes orchestrated by outside forces - activist

© RIA Novosti . Artem Chernish / Go to the mediabankFootball fans protest death of Spartak Moscow supporter
Football fans protest death of Spartak Moscow supporter - Sputnik International
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Saturday's clashes in central Moscow were orchestrated by external forces, an activist said on Sunday.

Saturday's clashes in central Moscow were orchestrated by external forces, an activist said on Sunday.

Thousands of football fans clashed with police on Moscow's Manezh Square on Saturday over the shooting dead of Spartak Moscow fan Yegor Sviridov earlier this week. Reports say at least 29 people were hospitalized.

President Dmitry Medvedev justified the police's tough action against the protesters, saying it was lawful.

Sviridov, 28, was allegedly killed in a fight with a group of men from the North Caucasus. Police have already detained a suspect from the North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria.

"External forces were definitely at work there," Aikaz Mikaelyan, the head of the United Caucasus Youth Assembly NGO, told RIA Novosti.

Members of the North Caucasus's numerous ethnic minorities are afraid of reprisals, Mikaelyan added, amid fears that Sviridov's killing may flare up the longstanding ill-feeling between ethnic Russians and the internal migrants from the North Caucasus.

Speaking at a meeting with Russian Football Union President Sergei Fursenko, Moscow's police chief, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, said the masterminds behind the clashes used the tragedy as a tool in their "nationalist games."

Fursenko said sport and politics should not mix up.

"Football is outside politics," he said. "We will not let them provoke us; no party or movement will ever force us into shouting their slogans."

"What happened had nothing whatsoever to do with football," Spartak Moscow coach Valery Karpin said. "We will not tolerate people who want to use stadium stands to express what they cannot express elsewhere."

 

MOSCOW, December 12 (RIA Novosti)

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