MOSCOW – Russian news agencies say Moscow police have arrested 500 people to stop them attending rival protests over the killing of a soccer fan and the ethnic violence that erupted after the slaying.
A young Moscow man was fatally shot with rubber bullets during a fight with people from the Russia's Caucasus region at a bus stop this month.
People from the Caucasus are typically darker-skinned than northern Russians and many are Muslim. They have traditionally been victims of ethnic discrimination in Russia.
After the killing, mobs attacked people from the Caucasus in a riot outside the Kremlin on Dec. 11.
Police have largely kept a lid on protests since then, arresting hundreds of people — both Slavs and non-Slavs.
Opposition leaders have accused authorities of encouraging violence as a pretext to introduce legislation that would see participants in unauthorized rallies serve prison time, rather than the current minimum fine. The next presidential elections are in 2012.
