Medvedev vows to ´deal´ with Moscow rioters

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev vowed Monday to “deal” with ultranationalists who joined football fans this weekend to run riot in the center of Moscow.

“Everything is under control — both in Moscow and the country,” Medvedev wrote on his Twitter page in a message posted at around midnight.

“We will deal with everyone who defiled things. Everyone. You can be certain of that,” Medvedev said using a crude Russian word that also means “defecated.”

Russian football fans and ultranationalists clashed with police on a central square facing the Kremlin on Saturday in a rally that was originally called to protest the police handling of an investigation into the shooting of a Spartak Moscow football fan.

But the unsanctioned Manezh Square gathering quickly unravelled into a riot in which hooded youths in black jackets chanted racist slogans and pelted police with blocks of ice and bottles.

The violence left 13 people in hospital, official said, in an incident exposing the close links between Russian extremists and football supporters.

It also proved a major embarrassment for Russia so soon after it won the right to host the 2018 World Cup, with the incident dominating both television news and the front pages of Moscow’s papers Monday..

The tension was sparked by the death of Yegor Sviridov, a Spartak Moscow fan who was shot in the head December 4 during a fight with men from the Russia’s predominantly-Muslim North Caucasus.

According to media reports, police released four of the five suspects only hours after their arrest.

A fifth man was shown confessing to the crime on state television, but saying that he acted in self defence.

Medvedev was briefed on the police handling of the Manezh riot by Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev on Sunday, with the country’s top police official also promising that “no one will escape punishment.”

But tensions continued to run high in Moscow over the weekend, with one man from Central Asia knifed to death by a gang of more than 15 youths late Sunday.

“A group of youths numbering more than 15 people, including a young woman, suddenly jumped on a passerby of Asiatic appearance for no apparent reason,” Interfax quoted an unnamed police official as saying.

“He was kicked and beaten. And at one point, one of the assailants knifed him in the spleen, resulting in the death,” the official said.

A Moscow news report, meanwhile, said another demonstration was being planned by soccer fans for Wednesday.

The LifeNews.ru website cited an unnamed Spartak supporter as saying the rallies would continue “until everyone takes notice of this murder.”

The website said that the rally threatened to degenerate into more violence because it would also be attended “by people from the south of Russia, who are gathering at the very same spot on the 15th.”