Pro-Putin youths protest outside EU's Russia HQ

MOSCOW, May 21 (Reuters) A pro-Kremlin youth movement started a seven-day protest today outside the European Union's headquarters in Moscow against what it says is the unfair detention of a teenager in Estonia.

Estonian police have held 17-year-old Mark Siryk since the end of April after arresting him alongside others during rioting over the removal of a Red Army memorial in Tallinn, the pro-Kremlin Nashi said.

Nashi activists hung a bell from scaffolding outside the EU's office on the banks of the River Moskva and promised to ring it every 15 minutes between 7 am and 10 pm for the next week.

''We have to remind the EU that they have political prisoners on their territory,'' said 35-year-old Vasily Yakemenko, a Nashi leader.

Nashi say Siryk, who is Estonian, was trying to promote Russian-Estonian relations when he was detained.

The EU has backed Estonia's right to remove the Red Army statue from central Tallinn, angering Russia which considers the monument a tribute to thousands of soldiers who died fighting the Nazis in World War Two.

And Russia and the EU clashed at a summit last Friday when German Chancellor Angela Merkel took Russia to task for stopping opposition leaders reaching an anti-Kremlin rally and backed Estonia's right to move the Red Army statue.

The staunchly pro-Kremlin Nashi has a reputation for pulling eye-catching and often aggressive stunts, but the tone of today's protest was sombre.

Around 30 Nashi activists, mainly in their late teens, attended the demonstration. They did not shout any slogans, instead they posed for group photos with one another and handed out leaflets showing a dreamy-eyed Siryk staring out from behind barbed wire.

Organisers handed out fizzy drinks and arranged 12 people to fly the Nashi flag -- red with a white diagonal cross -- in front of the EU's flag.

A Nashi spokeswoman said the red represented the Soviet Union and the white cross represented imperial Russia.

Reuters RJ GC1831