Authorities have taken steps to calm ethnic tensions in a town in southern Russia by banning liquor and evacuating "radical" youngsters after a stabbing sparked days of angry protests by locals demanding that residents from Chechnya be kicked out. President Putin's regional representative met with local officials and residents in Pugachyov, a town of some 40,000 near the Volga River, saying no ethnic group would be expelled en masse, but that migration officials are checking residents' paperwork.
Tensions have been simmering since Sunday when, according to prosecutors, a 20-year-old former paratrooper, Ruslan Marzhanov, died of stab wounds inflicted by a 16-year-old in a fight over a girl. The suspect, a Chechen, was arrested Sunday and confessed to the killing.
In the days since Marzhanov's death, hundreds of locals have marched through the town calling for the deportation of people from Chechnya and the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region where it is located.
Police said this week that they had prevented a vigilante attack on the town's small Chechen community and an arson attempt at the Halal café, frequented by patrons from the North Caucasus. Meanwhile, regional authorities called on protesters to refrain from "mob justice."
To minimize tensions, Pugachyov's Chechens, estimated at about 100 people, evacuated an unspecified number of youngsters believed to be "hard to control" or "radical," envoy Mikhail Babich said on Wednesday. That afternoon, locals briefly blocked a railroad, after twice blocking a major highway earlier this week.