MOSCOW, November 15 (R-Sport) – There will be no European football matches in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region until the situation there "normalizes," the president of the Union of European Football Associations said Friday.
At an emergency meeting in June, European football's governing body ruled that last year's suspension on continental action anywhere in the group of seven southern provinces should continue into 2013-14 for security reasons. UEFA ordered Europa League entrants Anzhi Makhachkala, normally based in the most volatile province of Dagestan, to nominate a home arena outside the North Caucasus.
Speaking in Moscow at the headquarters of the Russian Football Union, UEFA president Michel Platini said that would remain the case until stability is brought to the region.
"When the situation normalizes, we will reexamine our decision not to play there," he said. "Everything depends on security. We must protect all participants of football matches. If the situation doesn't change, we will not go there."
Russia's two top-flight clubs in those regions, Anzhi and Chechnya’s Terek Grozny, have complained bitterly about the ban, noting that Russian Premier League games routinely pass off without any trouble.
“Instead of studying the situation in the region, the [UEFA] committee accepted the recommendations of Western governments,” said Terek's honorary president Ramzan Kadyrov, also the Kremlin-installed leader of Chechnya.
Kadyrov claimed security problems are much more acute in Europe than in the Caucasus region, where fans “don’t burn cars or organize mass brawls.”
Earlier this year Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, was the site of twin blasts that killed four people hours before Anzhi hosted Lokomotiv Moscow in a league match that passed without incident. A suicide bombing in Dagestan five days later killed one and injured 13.
Attacks occur regularly in the North Caucasus on security forces, police and civilians, generated by ethnic, religious and political rivalries, as well as poverty and corruption. The violence is also fed by an Islamist insurgency, which has been especially resilient in Dagestan and fueled a series of bloody post-Soviet separatist wars in the neighboring republic of Chechnya.
