Belgrade: Red Star beat CSKA, 20k fans honor Tu-154 victims

Belgrade: Red Star beat CSKA, 20k fans honor Tu-154 victims

In a fantastic atmosphere, Red Star outplayed the reigning Euroleague champions, just a week after also defeating Real Madrid in Belgrade.

Red Star produced an excellent defensive display, containing CSKA's Milos Teodosic and Nando de Colo, who scored just 8 points combined.

After inflicting only the third defeat on CSKA, Red Star, which are now 7-8 in the competition, again have serious ambitions to reach the Top 8 stage.

Ognjen Kuzmic led the Belgraders with 16 points, followed by Marko Simonovic with 14 and Charles Jenkins with 11 points, while Andrey Vorontsevich excelled for the visitors with 21.

Red Star next play Zalgiris Kaunas on the road on January 6.

Fans honor Tu-154 victims

Before the start of the game, about 20,000 fans who gathered in Kombank Arena honored the victims of Sunday's crash of a Russian Tu-154 airplane, that killed 92 people, including members of the Russian Army's Alexandrov Ensemble.

The Red Star supporters waved Russian and Serbian flags as a recording of the choir's rendition of Serbia's iconic WW1-era song "Tamo Daleko" was played in the arena. The fans sang along, and displayed a banner reading, in Russian, "Let the singing of this 20,000-member choir be heard in the sky."

Russian media have reported about this, while the touching gesture caused an outburst of emotional comments and reactions on the internet, said Sputnik, with Russians expressing their gratitude and friendship toward Serbians.

The Russian media also noted that everyone present in the arena stood up to honor the Russian victims, and that Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Chepurin was also there.

The Aleksandrov Ensemble performed in Serbia on several occasions. In the wake of the tragedy, the city authorities announced their plans to name a park in the center of Belgrade "Alexandrov Choir Park".