NEWS

YOUTH CAMP BRAWL FUELS ETHNIC UNREST

MOSCOW — A brawl at a youth camp near the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics has turned into an ethnically charged battle pitting Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov against Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachyov.

What exactly happened on Sunday night at the Don camp in the Krasnodar region’s Tuapse district remains a matter of dispute, but the incident serves as an embarrassment for Tkachyov, who is overseeing preparations for the Sochi games.

Prosecutors said the fight broke out after a deputy camp director saw three Chechen campers arguing with a 14-year-old girl from the Rostov region and asked them to back off.

Fists started flying, and the deputy director, Boris Usoltsev, suffered a broken nose and an injured leg, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement.

A Chechen adult supervising the Chechen teens at the camp joined in the melee, the statement said.

Then, a few hours later, a throng of unidentified people arrived at the camp and initiated a clash with the Chechen campers, it said.

Three people were hospitalized — Usoltsev, a Chechen teen and a local resident ...

COURT DECLARES POET MILITANT LEADER

MOSCOW — A Moscow region court ruled Wednesday that an amateur poet crossed the line between art and crime by turning a youth commune into an illegal militant group and abusing several of its members.

But Yulia Privedennaya, 34, who was handed a 4 1/2-year suspended sentence, said the commune’s goal was only to educate the young through poetry.

Privedennaya ...

TWO MEN IMPRISONED FOR PAYING HOMELESS ‘SLAVES’ WITH ALCOHOL

MOSCOW — Two men from the Perm region were sentenced Wednesday to jail terms for holding 11 homeless people captive for up to five years at a scrap metal processing plant and plying them with alcohol in lieu of salaries, prosecutors said.

A jury convicted ...

RUSSIANS DISLIKE ‘RICH’ PR PEOPLE

MOSCOW — Russians think that public relations jobs are prestigious and profitable, but immoral, and do not want their own children to take up the line ...