OREANDA-NEWS Moscow is convinced that the mass riots at the Makhachkala airport are a planned provocation organized from the outside, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters. Her comment was published on the agency's website.

"The mass riots you mentioned that took place in the Republic of Dagestan are the result of a provocation planned and carried out from the outside, aimed at undermining the harmonious development and ethno-confessional unity of the people of the Russian Federation," she said. "They (the riots) were inspired by those who have repeatedly resorted to openly extremist and terrorist methods in order to destabilize the domestic political situation in Russia."

In carrying out the riots, "a direct and key role was assigned to the criminal Kiev regime, which in turn acted with the hands of notorious Russophobes who settled there," the diplomat continued.

Zakharova is convinced that "the prompt and unambiguous reaction of the Russian leadership and the coordinated, clear and proportionate actions of domestic law enforcement agencies are an unequivocal answer to all those who hope to sow confusion and discord in Russia."

Earlier, the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov said that the riots were provoked from abroad.

As the Investigative Committee reported, on the evening of October 29, "currently unidentified persons, while on the territory of the Uytash airport (Makhachkala), accompanying their actions with mass riots and violence, providing armed resistance to law enforcement officers, using objects that pose a danger to others, penetrated into the guarded territory of the airport and subsequently to the take-off- the landing strip - to the plane that arrived from Israel, to the premises of the airport where the pogroms were committed."

In fact, a criminal case of mass riots is being investigated. The Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that more than 150 active participants in the riots were identified, 60 suspects were detained. Two dozen people were injured, five of them remain in hospital. The airport resumed operations on Monday afternoon.