An outburst of racist violence in Moscow

Elections to the Moscow City Duma and additional elections to the RF State Duma which took place in Moscow on 4 December 2005 were accompanied by active and extremely aggressive ethno-nationalist, and at times explicitly racist, campaigning. As a consequence, in early December, Moscow saw an outburst of racist violence. Within three days, on 3-5 December, two massive fights and three individual attacks involving neo-Nazi youth gangs were reported, in which two people were killed, two more were hospitalized, and the overall number of victims may be more than ten.

All the three attacks followed the same scenario - a person of "non-Slav' appearance (the victims included people from Tajikistan, Kabardino-Balkaria and South-East Asia) was assaulted by a group of teenage skinheads. They brutally beat their victims and stabbed them with knives. A neo-Nazi gang active in the north-east of Moscow has claimed responsibility for one of the attacks.

On 3 December, a group of about 20 skinheads assaulted rappers coming back from a concert (skinheads believe that rap music fans are "traitors of the white race'). A total of about 40 people were involved in the fighting, but as in most such incidents, the actual number of victims is unknown.

On 5 December, a group of teenage skinheads attacked a group of migrant workers - one of them, an Armenian, was stabbed and hospitalized. Again, the actual number of victims is unknown. Notably, police authorities, while initially admitting that the 5 December attack involved extremist youth gangs, later denied the fact of massive fighting, as well as the nationalist motives behind it.

Overall, since the beginning of 2005, 125 people have been victims of skinhead attacks in Moscow, and 8 of the victims died.