11.07 After Fatal Brawl, Russias Ethnic Tensions Hard to Cool
MOSCOW, July 10 (RIA Novosti) Russian officials and community leaders tried Wednesday to cool interethnic tensions by calling for a liquor ban, evacuating radical youngsters and promising justice, after a stabbing death in a small town triggered days of angry protests demanding that residents from Russias war-scarred republic of Chechnya be kicked out.
President Vladimir Putins regional representative met with local officials and townspeople in Pugachyov, a town of some 40,000 near the Volga River, saying no ethnic group would be expelled en masse, but that migration officials are checking residents paperwork. The envoy, Mikhail Babich, assured journalists that investigators are hard at work, probing both the fatal brawl and the rallies and threats that followed.
Tensions have been roiling since Sunday, when a 20-year-old former paratrooper died of stab wounds inflicted by a 16-year-old in a fight over a girl, as prosecutors have described the incident. The suspect, an ethnic Chechen, was detained Sunday and confessed to the killing, prosecutors said; some press reports have identified the ethnicity of the blond-haired victim, Ruslan Marzhanov, as half Russian, half Tatar.
In the days since Marzhanovs death, hundreds of locals have marched through town calling for the deportation of people from Chechnya and the mostly Muslim North Caucasus region where it is located.
Police said this week that they had prevented a vigilante attack on the towns small Chechen community and an arson attempt at the Halal caf?, reportedly frequented by patrons from the North Caucasus. Regional officials, meanwhile, called on protesters to refrain from mob justice.
To minimize tensions, Pugachyovs Chechens, estimated at about 100 people, evacuated an unspecified number of youngsters believed to be hard to control or radical, Babich, the Putin envoy, told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.
That afternoon, locals briefly blocked a railroad, after twice blocking a major highway earlier this week, according to media and police reports.
An
