A public gathering in southern Moscow grew into massacre and riots. On Sunday, people gathered at a place, where at night of October 10 Yegor Shcherbakov of 25, who was with a girlfriend, was killed by a non-Slavic man. On Sunday, a crowd of over 1,000 people led by nationalists and football fans headed to the Biruza trade centre, began breaking shop windows and attempted to set the building on fire. From the trade centre, the most aggressive part of the crowd moved towards a vegetable store. The OMON (the police commandos) met the most active participants at the exit. About 400 people were detained.
The police say the murderer was “a man of Caucasus appearance,” the Kommersant writes. On Friday already his picture from city cameras was put up on pages of all nationalistic communities in social networks. And a new public gathering was announced the same night.
OMON made several attempts to stop the crowd, but every time the people got around the police cordon through yards, the newspaper wrote. Visitors from the Caucasus republics or Middle Asian countries, who happened to be nearby, tried to shelter in bushes, but not all of them managed to escape. Groups were beating them up, while the police who stood nearby waived them reluctantly from the victims.
The police have announced a Volcano-5 mission, which proves the event was out of ordinary. Missions of the kind were announced last time three years ago, after the terror acts in the Moscow underground (where 40 people were killed). A mission is announced if the police needs to detain very dangerous armed criminals and allows most strict measures for detention, the Kommersant explains.
The topic of migrants and ethnic crime has been a key item in the summer election campaign during the election of the Moscow mayor, the Vedomosti writes. Alexei Navalny, who ranked second in the election, on Sunday demand in his blog dismission of the Moscow police head and organisation of police reforms, as well as implementation of a visa regime with the Middle Asian countries.
The State Duma deputies are asking Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee to check actions of the police and officials in the Western Biryulovo district, Izvestia writes. The current information is that people living in the district have been complaining about a dramatic change of the criminal situation there and connected it with the vegetable store, but the police and the local authorities would not react. The murder of Shcherbakov caused rallies, which reiterated the problems, but Head of the Moscow police Anatoly Yakunin came to meet with people on the fourth day only. On Sunday, the newspaper stresses, the authorities lost control of the situation, and the ball was on the side of the nationalists - they provoked the disorders and attempted anti-migrant massacres.
Representatives of the nationalists say they have nothing to do with the massacre. Alexander Belov of the Russkiye /Russians/ movement stressed that was a reaction of local residents to lack of action from the authorities. “The public gathering has not been pre-planned,” he told the newspaper.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta names several reasons, which may explain the situation - in its opinion. Those are the situation in the law enforcement authorities, which, the daily writes, fail to maintain the order in streets, as well as a lack of a clear and systematic migration policies, lack of even initial drafts of the policies in culture adaptation, which should be aimed also at “alternatively thinking” people in certain regions, and at the “alternatively thinking” part of lumpen locals.