About 4,000 foreigners, who came to Russia as football fans to attend the 2018 FIFA World Cup, still remain in the country, Russian lawmaker Valentina Pivnenko said on Friday at a meeting of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference
KALININGRAD (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th March, 2019) About 4,000 foreigners, who came to Russia as football fans to attend the 2018 FIFA World Cup, still remain in the country, Russian lawmaker Valentina Pivnenko said on Friday at a meeting of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference.Earlier in the day, Kaliningrad hosted the meeting of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference Working Group on Migration and Integration. Lawmakers, representatives of NGOs and experts from Russia, Germany, Sweden and Latvia took part in it.
"Not all the fans turned out to be 'clean' fans. There were dozens of cases in the northwest when border guards stopped attempts to cross the border. Now, unfortunately, more than 4,000 fans are roaming around. However, they have not showed themselves in a negative way. They are being identified and [the authorities] personally deal with each such undocumented person," Pivnenko said.
Russia hosted its first FIFA World Cup from June 14 to July 15, 2018 The matches took place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Yekaterinburg and Sochi.
