Police have detained over 2,100 protesters in Moscow and Moscow region on Saturday amid new wave of race disturbances.
About 1,300 people, many of them with non-lethal weapons, knives and baseball bats were detained in Moscow. Other 800 people were detained across Moscow region, local police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeev said.
About 100 people were detained near the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VVTs) in northeastern Moscow.
"Several groups of youth, each containing from ten to twenty people, were detained near the central entrance to [the park surrounding] VVTs and in close vicinity to the exhibition center. These citizens were detained in order to prevent and suppress unlawful acts," a police source said.
The National Democratic Alliance movement held a sanctioned rally in front of the Moscow's Ostankino broadcasting center, which is located not far from VVTs. The participants of the rally protested the "incorrect" media coverage of a range of events. Later, the protesters headed to the park nearby with a view to continue the meeting in other place. Police blocked the exits from the park and detained the rioters, most of them teenagers.
Several dozens scores of rioters were also detained in the southeastern city of Volgograd. "About fifty people wearing medical masks gathered in the center of Volgograd and tried to hold an unsanctioned meeting," a local police spokesman said.
In the light of the recent events in Moscow policemen decided to suppress the rally.
The Russian capital saw its biggest public disturbances for almost a decade when a 5,000-strong crowd of nationalists and football hooligans clashed with police at central Manezh Square last Saturday, December 11. The fans were protesting police negligence over the death of Yegor Sviridov, 28, who was killed in a brawl with migrants from Russia's North Caucasus region earlier in November.
The clash was followed on Wednesday by further disturbances as ethnic Russians and internal migrants gathered for a confrontation near a major train terminus in Moscow.
MOSCOW, December 18 (RIA Novosti)
