NOVO-OGARYOVO, August 1 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed discontent with the work of law enforcers after a recent incident at a Moscow market when a police officer was seriously injured.
An operation to arrest a suspected sex offender at a market in the Russian capital last weekend ended with a police officer suffering serious head injuries when he was attacked by an angry mob.
“The efforts being made are clearly not enough: either nothing happens or the rates are unacceptably slow,” Putin said Wednesday at a special meeting on the fight against crime at trade outlets.
Two Russian police officers, Senior Lieutenant Vladimir Cherezov and Senior Sergeant Yury Lunkov, are being investigated for their alleged failure to take action when a crowd of people at the Matveyevsky market in western Moscow attempted to stop the detention Saturday of a man suspected of sexual assault, investigators said.
In the scuffle that broke out, one of the police officers present, Anton Kudryashov, was hit over the head, reportedly with brass knuckles. The blow smashed his skull and he has since undergone brain surgery. The brawl at the market, a video of which was posted on the Internet, has attracted nationwide attention in Russia.
Moscow police launched a series of raids in the wake of the attack “to decriminalize Moscow marketplaces.” The raids continued even after the detention of Magomed Rasulov, the man suspected of inflicting the blow, who has now been charged with the attempted murder of a police officer. In total, more than 1,000 people were detained in the market raids, police said.
At Wednesday's meeting attended by acting Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev and Federal Migration Service chief Konstantin Romodanovsky, Putin also blasted the injured police officer’s colleagues for their inaction.
“Police officers are standing near watching their colleague being beaten up,” the president said. “Why? Are they so cowardly? Possible but unlikely. Most likely that they did nothing in order to work off 30 pieces of silver they get from sellers.”
It is “clear to everyone,” Putin said, “except the Interior Ministry’s internal affairs division. Where is the result of their work?”
Putin called on the Interior Ministry’s Main Internal Affairs Directorate to investigate the incident on the market. He urged all other relevant bodies, including the Migration Service and the Investigative Committee, to work effectively on the case.
Saturday’s incident has fueled ethnic tensions in Moscow, whose marketplaces employ many migrants from post-Soviet states and representatives of ethnic minorities from the North Caucasus who, though Russian citizens, are also treated as migrants by many Russians outside the North Caucasus.
Investigators will thoroughly look into not only the alleged police negligence but also corruption that sellers and law enforcers are allegedly involved in, Vasily Piskaryov, a deputy chief of the Investigation Committee, said at the meeting with Putin.
The headline of this story has been modified to improve grammar, now saying "unhappy" instead of "discontent."
