A street brawl broke out near Slavyanskaya Ploshchad in Moscow on Friday night when Russian nationalist youth “armed with metal poles and broken bottles” attacked Caucasians reports the Moscow Times. One Armenian youth was hospitalized with stab wounds and 42 persons were arrested. Estimates suggest that 50 Russian nationalists, some of which are members of Alexandr Belov’s Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) participated in the fight. In a statement Belov denied that DPNI did not have any kind of relations with organizers of the brawl. Further, Belov was quoted in the Moscow Times that DPNI members were there “peacefully guarding Moscow from gay prostitutes when groups of people from the Caucasus approached and provoked a reaction.”
The DPNI TV (which I must say is disturbing in and of itself) has posted footage of the incident on its website. Click here to view: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
In a statement to the press, Yuri Luzhkov, who Putin recently renominated as mayor of Moscow, said “Any display of chauvinism, xenophobia or nationalism will be harshly put down in our capital, on the basis of the Constitution … and on the basis of the law.”
Belov cracked back at Luzhkov in the Associated Press, saying that “[he] has been sitting in his chair too long. He has lost control of the city.”
