Anti-migrant rally in the Moscow region

In the evening of September 13, 2021, several hundred residents of the village of Buzhaninovo near Sergiev Posad, Moscow came together for a gathering. The reason for the gathering was the rape and murder of a local 67-year-old (or 65-year-old) resident. The protesters came to the dormitory of the local enterprise Ekookna, where migrant workers live, and demanded to remove all non-locals from Buzhaninovo. They were looking through the windows for the migrant workers and shouted racist slogans. One of the local residents hit a representative of Ekookna in the face.

Police cars arrived, and the police persuaded the residents to disperse. There was no further escalation during the night.

By midnight, law enforcement agencies announced that two migrants had been detained. Later, the head of the municipality, Mikhail Tokarev, said the suspects were citizens of Tajikistan.

The news caused an avalanche of anti-migrant comments. For example, the website Tsargrad wrote about a 10 million army of Muslim migrants who will serve as the fifth column in Russia’s confrontation with the West.

By the following morning, the administration of the Sergiev Posad district in the Moscow region announced that it would demand the closure of the dormitory, although by that time it was known that neither of the suspects lived in the hostel but worked on the construction of a private residence nearby. Then Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobjev ordered the immediate closure of the dormitory.