The number of deaths due to racially-motivated violence rose to 26 this week with two murders in Moscow. On Monday an Azeri citizen was stabbed and a group of teenagers has been accused of his murder. And yesterday a neo-Nazi group killed a young man on his way to an anti-fascist concert. The attack was discussed in an Internet forum.

The SOVA Centre, which reports on nationalist extremism and racism in Russia, has said that so far at least 26 people have been killed and 72 injured as a result of racist violence this year. Last year 67 were killed in racist attacks. Another organization, the Moscow-based Bureau of Human Rights, reports that there are an estimated 50,000 skinheads in Russia.

There are no official figures for the types of victim, but – broadly speaking – racist violence in Russia tends to be motivated either by the victim’s origin or his or her ideology. Russia’s various national minorities (Jews, gypsies, Kabardin, Dargins), together with migrants from the countries of the former USSR (Azeris, Uzbeks, Tajiks) and from the rest of the world (Africans, South Asians), fall into the first camp. Anti-fascist activists and even openly anti-racist academics fall into the latter.

Further information:

• SOVA: A young man murdered on his way to an antifascist concert
  
• RussiaToday: Racists blamed for fatal attack on Azeri
  
• The Guardian: Russian anti-racism academic murdered