Riot police show strength to warn troublemakers

By James Kilner

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Techno and rock music blared away as the bare-chested Russian policeman lay on his back on a pile of broken glass and nails. A colleague dropped three daggers, point down, on his stomach and trampled on his chest.

Russia's special police, the OMON, were showing what they are made of.

Kremlin critics and Western governments accused them of using excessive force to break up opposition protests last month.

But the message they were sending on Thursday was they were ready to take on any troublemakers in a year when more protests are likely as Russia prepares to elect a new president.

"This is a warning," said an OMON colonel who called himself Vladimir Antonovich as he watched three policemen smash flaming bricks with their bare fists.

"We want to show off what we can do."

Last month foreign embassies and the EU said the OMON was too heavy-handed when it used batons to break up anti-Kremlin protests, called "March of the Dissenters," in Moscow and St Petersburg, and detained journalists.

"The police were provoked in St Petersburg," Antonovich, the colonel, said, dressed in the OMON's urban camouflage uniform. "What does the March of the Dissenters need? It needs media coverage and they provoked the police into a reaction."

Crowd control is not the OMON's only role. Equipped with machine guns and armored vehicles, they patrol Russia's volatile Chechnya region and are trained to rescue hostages.

At a media event to which foreign journalists had been invited for the first time, the OMON showed off textbook crowd control techniques.

Wearing crash helmets and body armor and carrying shields the police swung their batons in unison and marched forward one step at a time.

"KNOW NO MERCY"

Opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who say he has trampled on democracy, have organized several protests.

The authorities have mainly banned these marches or allowed watered-down versions and several times in the last few months protesters and police have clashed. An investigation has yet to judge if the police used excessive force.

In the sprawling, wooded base, a 1-1/2 hour drive from central Moscow the police reveled in showing their muscle.