MOSCOW, July 9 (RIA Novosti) – A deadly street fight in a small town in central Russia has exposed smoldering ethnic tensions, with hundreds of locals shouting for resident Chechens to be evicted, and the government reportedly sending in armored personnel carriers filled with police troops to quell the unrest.
According to a statement issued on Monday by the regional prosecutor’s office, a 16-year-old ethnic Chechen fatally stabbed a “local man” with a scalpel outside the Golden Barrel restaurant in the early hours of Sunday morning in Pugachyov, whose population is estimated at 40,000.
The fight was apparently over a girl, a senior investigator told RIA Novosti.
The suspected killer was detained later Sunday, the same day that residents marched through the streets calling for all ethnic Chechens to be “evicted” from the town, the prosecutor’s statement said. A funeral service for the deceased local, a 20-year-old former paratrooper, also took place on Sunday.
Russia fought two bloody civil wars in Chechnya in the mid to late 1990s, and many natives of that region fled to other parts of the country. Lingering ethnic tensions, however, occasionally flare up between North Caucasus natives and Slavic Russians.
Last month, in an incident similar to that in Pugachyov, hundreds of Slavic Russians marched in a “Day of Rage” protest through the provincial town of Udomlya, 350 kilometers (220 miles) northwest of Moscow, after a brawl between locals and out-of-towners apparently from the North Caucasus.
Sunday’s funeral for the stabbing victim in Pugachyov was notably followed by a mass brawl between locals and ethnic Chechens, as hundreds of angry locals marched to a part of town inhabited by an ethnic Chechen diaspora, regional news site Vzglyad-Info reported.
Police were unable to stop the fighting, but a number of people were detained afterward, Councilman Denis Maletin said.
The march continued on Monday, with locals also calling for ethnic Chechens to be cast out of the town, the prosecutor’s statement said, adding that “police officers were maintaining public order.”
In a report about the incident, Russian news network RBC aired a video of armored personnel carriers rolling through the town. It said 600 locals had joined the march.
Regional Governor Valery Radayev on Monday warned residents not to resort to “mob rule” in respect to ethnic minorities, according to a statement posted on his administration’s website.
Stanislav Sidorov, head of the town administration, tried to address the protesters but had to retreat when an empty bottle was hurled at him amid jeering from the crowd.
Meanwhile, hundreds of locals blocked a federal highway, the regional branch of the press and information ministry said. It later announced that traffic had been restored to normal, without saying how long the blockade had lasted.
Sergei Arenin, head of the region’s police force, accompanied by Deputy Governor Denis Fadeyev and regional Deputy Prosecutor Timur Maslov, met with the protesters.
Arenin promised to look into their complaints about “representatives of the Chechen diaspora,” Vzglyad-Info reported. He also warned them against blocking highways and other illegal actions.
As he spoke, demonstrators began chanting: “Deport them!”
Local police on Monday denied media reports that armored vehicles were brought into Pugachyov. “The situation is under control,” police said in a statement.
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