Huge traffic jams across Moscow forced soccer team to walk to match with Inter Milan

Huge jams snarled traffic across the Russian capital, adding several hours to drivers' evening commutes and forcing the members of the Spartak soccer team to abandon their bus and walk part of the way to the stadium for their Champions League match with Inter Milan.

Moscow city traffic police blamed the tie-ups Tuesday on a higher than normal number of accidents on the two ring roads that accommodate much of the city traffic, energy shortages that caused some traffic signals to turn off and a large number of foreign delegations.

"We are the capital, after all, and we are obliged to serve them," said Marina Vasilyeva, spokeswoman for the department.

Spartak coach Vladimir Fedotov said that a fan had noticed the team bus and warned he'd been sitting in traffic for three hours already.

"So we left the bus and ran two kilometers (one mile) to the nearest subway station," Fedotov was quoted as saying by the Gazeta.ru news site. "In the subway, I gathered our team in one car and yelled: 'Are the defenders all here? The attackers?"'

Spartak went down 1-0 to Inter in the Champions League Group B game, reports AP.

More than 3 million cars are registered in Moscow, but the streets are jammed with many more coming from outside the city. The construction boom also has resulted in large numbers of trucks and other heavy equipment on the roadways.

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