Madam, – “. . . a World Cup for Russia makes every sort of sense to the non-partisan”, according to Niall Kiely (Sports Weekend, December 11th). I was one of 19 Irish football fans hospitalised in Moscow in September 2002 following racist attacks by neo-nazi skinheads. On that occasion, the weekend of a European Championship qualifier, gangs of marauding thugs armed with sticks and planks, and with blades embedded in the toecaps of their boots, were as much a part of the Moscow scenery as St Basil’s and the Kremlin. It has been documented ad nauseam that Russia has not yet succeeded in solving the problem of extreme violence associated with major football games. Nor has it come close to eliminating the attacks, frequently fatal, on unfortunates whose crime is that they look foreign.
May I suggest that Mr Kiely research modern Russia via Google? Searches on topics such as football hooliganism, racist murders, censorship of the press, organised crime and human rights abuses should provide enough material to keep him reading until 2018. – Yours, etc,