The head of the Russian Orthodox Church on Tuesday called on authorities, society and religious organizations to join efforts in fighting the spread of radical views.
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia spoke following Saturday's riots in downtown Moscow sparked by the death of a football fan killed in a street brawl by a dark-skinned internal migrant from the North Caucasus a week ago who said it had been self-defense.
Kirill said "intolerable conditions" should be created for radical groups in ethnic diasporas and among Russians. "Fighting radicalism is the path to be followed to get interethnic relations out of the dangerous state they are in," he said.
"Radicals need to be cut off from respectable people," he told journalists.
Dozens were hospitalized and dozens detained on Saturday following nationalist riots on Moscow's Manezh Square that used as a pretext the death of 28-year-old Spartak Moscow fan Yegor Sviridov from the hand of Aslan Cherkesov, 26, who fired four shots at him from a rubber-bullet pistol.
President Dmitry Medvedev has urged a clampdown on clashes caused by racial, national or religious hatred as such acts "threaten the stability of the state."
MOSCOW, December 14 (RIA Novosti)
