On February 5, Portal-Credo.ru published a statement by the public "Committee for the Protection of Freedom of Conscience" in connection with the "shameful appeal of a number of State Duma deputies and several hundred more citizens to the Prosecutor General's Office with an actual demand to ban Judaism in Russia" (for more details, see the information tape of another project of the SOVA Center - "Nationalism and xenophobia" ).

Deputy Chairman of the NORM Taras (Abdul-Kerim) Chernienko, in an interview with Interfax, said that of the Russian Muslims living in Moscow, approximately 75% profess Shiism. In the whole country, he said, among them are approximately 60% Sunnis (of which about 5% are Salafists) and 40% are Sunnis. "The fact is, - added T.

At the beginning of February 2005 in Budennovsk (Stavropol Territory) vandals damaged the monument to the Armenians - the founders of the city. Both the Russian and Armenian sides of the monument suffered: the numbers "1799-2004" were torn from the Russian, and the same numbers and almost the entire inscription "Surb Khach" from the Armenian. According to experts, what happened may be the result of both anti-Caucasian sentiments in general and an attack by Satanists.

Gradually, the situation with the anti-Semitic "Letter of Five Hundred" begins to clear up . Contrary to initial assumptions, there were still two documents - a letter, the text of which was published by Rus Pravoslavnaya, and a deputy's request to the Prosecutor General's Office, signed by nineteen deputies of the State Duma.

On February 4, on the air of the Voice of Russia radio station, the manager of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan of Kaluga and Borovsk, Kliment, announced that the Russian Orthodox Church plans to apply to government agencies with an official request to create a public and church television channel. According to Metropolitan Kliment, the main task of the channel should be education. "Our screen is very littered with all sorts of sinfulness, all sorts of cheap material.

Publicist Leonid Nikitinsky, in an article published on January 31 in Novaya Gazeta , drew attention to the problems of the regional charitable public organization "Maria's House", which Moscow officials are evicting from the premises it has occupied since 1991. Her difficulties began after the government banned non-governmental organizations since 2002 from receiving humanitarian aid from abroad without paying customs duties. “In turn,” writes L.

In the city of Volsk (Saratov region), a lawsuit is ongoing, initiated by the local branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in connection with the decision of the city administration to move the monument to Lenin from the central square. The monument stood on the spot where the Trinity Cathedral used to stand, destroyed in the early 1930s. Now the temple is going to be restored. Although in August 2003 the mayor of the city A.I.

On February 4, the City Court of Aznakayevo (Tatarstan) sentenced two residents of this city, Salavat Khafizov and Anas Garipov, to large fines. They were charged under Part 2 of Art.