Porcelain figures of Russian footballers Alexander Kokorin and Pavel Mamaev Photo: IC

 

Russian soccer players Pavel Mamaev and Alexander Kokorin were released on Tuesday after spending nearly a year in prison over a night of drunken assaults. 

Russian state television showed Krasnodar midfielder Mamaev, 31, and Zenit Saint-Petersburg forward Kokorin, 28, leave the prison where they were held in the southwestern Belgorod region. 

Wearing black hoodies, the pair rushed to a car while refusing to take questions from the media gathered outside the prison.

A court this month granted the two early release following their convictions in May for last year's attacks in Moscow. 

Including time in pre-trial detention, they had served 11 months of their 17-18 month sentences for hooliganism.

In a booze-fuelled night in October, Mamaev and Kokorin first assaulted the chauffeur of a TV presenter as he waited in a car park. 

In an assault caught on ­video, they then attacked two government officials in an upmarket cafe, hitting one of them with a chair.

The assaults sparked outrage in Russia, where the pair had previously caused scandal when a video emerged from a Monte Carlo nightclub showing them cavorting at a champagne-fuelled party ­shortly after ­Russia's early exit from Euro 2016.

The Russian Premier League last year condemned the assault and briefly considered a lifetime ban. 

Krasnodar still lists Mamaev as a player on its website, which says that his contract is valid until the end of the year.