Murder of soccer fan by Caucasians and their subsequent release continues to rock Russia.
Around dusk on Dec. 11, Moscow’s police chief, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, arrived at the scene of a race riot that his troops had failed to quell. Mobs of skinheads had savagely beaten dozens of passersby that afternoon in the streets and on the subway, leaving blood on the ground and swastikas scrawled on the walls across from the Kremlin gates. As Kolokoltsev stood there, thousands of rioters were still chanting racist slogans and throwing bottles and flares at his men. He decided it was time to negotiate.
For a police force not known for being shy with its truncheons, this was an unprecedented move, and it has solidified the growing belief among the Russian public that the authorities are either unable or unwilling to stop the recent wave of violence being perpetrated by the country’s nationalists.
“It was basically admitting defeat,” says Evgeny Valyaev, the shaven-headed leader of supremacist group Russky Obraz, whose members took part in Saturday’s riots. “They shouldn’t have provoked us. That was their mistake. So Kolokoltsev was forced to negotiate with a man in a black mask,” he told TIME in an interview Monday.