Medvedev pledges punishment for Moscow rioters
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said on Twitter that all those involved in organizing mass riots in downtown Moscow on Saturday will be brought to account.
"Everything is under control both in the country and in Moscow. All troublemakers will be punished, have no doubt," Medvedev wrote on the microblogging website in Russian late on Sunday.
Dozens were arrested and 29 hospitalized on Saturday as thousands of football fans and nationalists clashed with police in Moscow`s Manezh Square over the death of a soccer fan in a street brawl a week ago that has sparked a wave of nationalist sentiments across the country. The riots occurred two weeks after Russia won the bid to host the 2018 World Cup.
Spartak Moscow fan Yegor Sviridov, 28, was killed in a clash with a group of internal migrants from the North Caucasus early last Monday. Police have detained a man from the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, Aslan Cherkesov, who is suspected of fatally shooting Sviridov from a rubber-bullet gun.
Cherkesov claimed he had fired the four shots at Sviridov in self-defense.
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