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200 Drunk Soccer Fans Rampage on Arbat

A group of soccer fans, drinking beer and celebrating a big victory by their favorite team, smashed several kiosks and shop windows on the Arbat late Sunday, city police said. The fans, however, blamed skinheads for the hooliganism, saying they had joined their ranks after the game.

At about 11 p.m., after CSKA Moscow beat Zenit St. Petersburg in the Russian Cup final, about 200 fans drifted down the Arbat encircled by a line of policemen, the police said. Suddenly, the crowd surged and several fans were thrown against glass kiosks and into cafe tables set up on the street.

"You know how it happens -- a light push in one flank of a dense crowd results in a powerful wave at another flank, especially when the crowd is not sober," a spokeswoman for Moscow's central district police said by telephone Monday.

Police said they quickly detained 30 people from the crowd, who then spent several hours in holding cells at the Arbat police station.

They were released early on Monday.

All were charged with petty hooliganism and will be ordered to pay fines, the amount of which will be determined by a court in the coming days, said Yevgeny Gildeyev, a spokesman for the city police.

RTR television reported Monday that several passersby -- among them a Turkish citizen -- were attacked by the soccer fans sweeping down Arbat, and several cars parked there had their windows broken.

Police could not confirm this report, and a duty officer in the Arbat police precinct reached by telephone refused to talk to the press.

The Turkish Embassy in Moscow also said it could not confirm an attack on a Turkish citizen.

Meanwhile, CSKA issued a statement Monday saying that the club's fans had nothing to do with the rampage on the Arbat.

A group of 40 skinheads joined the soccer fans at the Arbat after the game and were responsible for the hooliganism, the club's press service said in a statement carried by news wires.

The fans were described as having helped police to apprehend the skinheads.

CSKA club could not be reached by telephone Monday.

Vladimir Pronin, the Moscow police chief, bluntly denied any skinhead involvement in Sunday's incident. "These CSKA fans, celebrating their club's victory, probably hadn't exhausted their emotions at the stadium," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.

Gildeyev, the chief's spokesman, said most of the men detained on the Arbat were in their 20s and 30s and there were no teenage skinheads among them.

An employee of the McDonald's on the Arbat, which had one of its windows smashed by a bottle thrown from the crowd, also said skinheads were not the troublemakers.

"It was done by the fans," she said by telephone.

"Skinheads have been blamed for any street attack since April," Gildeyev said, referring to fears that skinheads would celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday on April 20 with street violence.

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