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Some 700 arrests as Moscow police prevent new race-hate riots

15 December 2010 19:35 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Around 700 people, some armed with stun guns and knives, were arrested in central Moscow on Wednesday evening as police mounted a massive operation to prevent new race-hate disorder, police said, APA reports quoting â€œRIA Novostiâ€.
Over 3,000 riot police were on duty at Europa Square, near the capital’s Kievsky train station, after reports that nationalists and migrants from Russia’s North Caucasus were planning to clash.
Police eventually managed to disperse the crowd, although groups of youths chanting nationalist slogans tried to close off a nearby street.
The developments came after the Russian capital saw its biggest public disturbances for almost a decade on Saturday as a 5,000-strong crowd of nationalists and football hooligans clashed with police near Red Square. Rioters also attacked people from the country’s North Caucasus region.
President Dmitry Medvedev called the disorder, which was triggered by the death of a football fan in a mass brawl with North Caucasus migrants, a threat to the very stability of the Russian state.
There were also arrests in St Petersburg as police prevented clashed between nationalists and Caucasus migrants.