Violent clashes have erupted in major U.S. cities and outside the White House between law enforcement and protesters taking to the streets against police brutality, The Moscow Times reported.
The nationwide wave of outrage was triggered following the death last Monday of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, after being arrested by Minneapolis police. The officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with third-degree murder.
Cities including Washington and Los Angeles deployed National Guard troops and imposed nighttime curfews as reports came in of property damage and looting. Around 4,100 people were arrested over the weekend.
Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice told CNN that the violence that overshadowed the peaceful protests came “right out of the Russian playbook,” a statement that drew ire from Russian officials. Acting chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Marco Rubio tweeted, without naming Russia, that social media accounts linked to at least three foreign adversaries were “actively stoking and promoting violence and confrontation from multiple angles.”
“The United States has certainly accumulated systemic human rights problems: race, ethnic and religious discrimination, police brutality, bias of justice, crowded prisons and uncontrolled use of firearms and self-defense weapons by individuals, to name a few. We are urging the U.S. authorities to take effective measures to improve the current state of affairs, resume good-faith efforts to honor international commitments and tailor national legislation to the UN basic principles on the use of force and firearms by law enforcement. And, of course, they should meticulously investigate the murder of George Floyd,” The Russian Foreign Ministry has said.
