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***** Riot upstages Vladimir Putin with protest that halts World Cup final
***** Riot member being dragged from the World Cup championship game by Russian security personnel.
Putin doesn't like to be globally embarrassed in such a manner. You can bet these four will be spending years in various Russian penal-colonies. Molodets!
Related: World Cup 2018: The Moral Clarity of ***** Riot‘s Protest
PS. There are 83 Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in Russian prisons for protesting the illegal annexation of their Crimea home. Film Director Oleg Sentsov is among these incarcerated political prisoners.
***** Riot member being dragged from the World Cup championship game by Russian security personnel.
7/15/18
Protest group ***** Riot, long a thorn in Vladimir Putin's side, claimed responsibility Sunday for four people who brought the World Cup final to a brief halt by running onto the field dressed in police uniforms as the Russian president and a global audience watched. Stewards tackled the three women and one man who charged onto the field simultaneously in the 52nd minute of one of the world's most viewed sporting events. Before being hauled away, one of the women reached the center of the field and shared a double high-five with France forward Kylian Mbappe. "Hello everyone from the Luzhniki field, it's great here," the heavily political punk performance group said on Twitter , and released a statement calling for the freeing of political prisoners, an end to "illegal arrests" of protesters and to "allow political competition" in Russia. The statement also referenced the case of Oleg Sentsov, a vocal opponent of Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, who was sentenced in 2015 to 20 years for conspiracy to commit terror acts. He denies the charges and has been on a hunger strike since mid-May.
"The citizens in question were taken to the local police station," the Moscow branch of the Russian Interior Ministry said, without providing further details. A video circulated on Russian social media after the match appeared to show two of the protesters, still in police uniforms, being harshly interrogated at a police station. The Internet TV channel Dozhd identified one of them as Pyotr Verzilov, one of the group's most prominent members. Putin was watching the game alongside his French and Croatian counterparts and FIFA President Gianni Infantino, among other dignitaries. FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The event's local organizing committee said it did not have further information.
Putin doesn't like to be globally embarrassed in such a manner. You can bet these four will be spending years in various Russian penal-colonies. Molodets!
Related: World Cup 2018: The Moral Clarity of ***** Riot‘s Protest
PS. There are 83 Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in Russian prisons for protesting the illegal annexation of their Crimea home. Film Director Oleg Sentsov is among these incarcerated political prisoners.