• Artur Grigoryants in charge of adjudicating football racism cases • Official says it’s right to punish ‘so-called, in inverted commas, victims’

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Russia’s top official in charge of adjudicating football racism cases has suggested that black players should not be considered real victims of racial abuse if they react with an “unpleasant gesture”.

Artur Grigoryants, head of the Russian Football Union’s disciplinary committee, was commenting on cases in which his commission had issued multi-game bans to black players who made rude gestures to fans following racist abuse.

Grigoryants referred to the players in question, including the former Blackburn and Queens Park Rangers defender Christopher Samba, as “so-called, in inverted commas, victims” and insisted it was right to punish them for losing “control”.

Russia, the 2018 World Cup host, has only “rare cases of racism” at stadiums, Grigoryants added.

Samba, now at Dynamo Moscow, was charged after reacting to racist abuse from Torpedo Moscow fans in September.

In December, the RFU banned the FC Rostov midfielder Guélor Kanga, from Gabon, for three matches for making a middle-finger gesture towards Spartak Moscow fans who were racially abusing him.