Youths from Russia's North Caucasus should not give in to attempts to manipulate them into participating in race-hate violence, a leading Caucasus organization said on Wednesday.
The Russian capital saw its biggest public disturbances for almost a decade on Saturday as crowds of nationalists and football hooligans clashed with police near Red Square. President Dmitry Medvedev called the disorder, and the tensions it exposed, a threat to the very stability of the Russian state.
"Statements signed by anonymous users who associate themselves with the North Caucasus and Islam are circulating on Internet social networks. They are calling on the Caucasus youth to come to the square in front of the Kiyevsky rail station today to retaliate," Sultan Togonidze, who heads the Russian Congress of Caucasus Peoples' youth committee, told journalists.
About 150 people from the Caucasus, some armed with stun guns and knives, are reported to have been detained near Moscow's Kievsky train terminal.
"There are people who are interested in the economic, political and social destabilization of Russia, people who are ready to do anything to attract the youth to this event," Togonidze said.
He also called on the Caucasus youth "not to become a puppet in this dirty game and not to fall for provocations".
Saturday's violence was triggered by the death of Spartak Moscow fan,Yegor Sviridov, 28, in a north Moscow brawl between football hooligans and migrants from the North Caucasus. RIA Novosti
