On February 17, 2007, in Orenburg (Southern Urals), a group of youngsters attacked, in broad daylight, a 21-year-old Uzbekistan citizen who had legally worked as a shoemaker. He was hospitalized with multiple stab wounds and died a few days later, on March 2.

On March 3, four teenagers were arrested and charged in connection with the attack. According to the local Prosecutor's Office, they have been charged with premeditated murder committed by a group with a motive of hooliganism and ethnic enmity. The attack was filmed, perhaps with an intention to post it on the Internet. If their participation in the crime is proven, the arrested teenagers will face up to 12 years in jail. It is not often when the Prosecutor's Office qualifies such attacks as hate crimes, thus the fact that this murder was categorized as racist in the earliest stages of the case means that the racist motive was evident.

It is the first racist murder case we know of to take place in a relatively quiet city of Orenburg. However, according to a survey dating back to 2005, 40% of Orenburg Region population were not against participating in interethnic clashes (8% said they would certainly take part in it, 10% would rather take part than not, and 22% did not express open readiness, but said that they did not exclude doing so in certain circumstances).

Last year, on April 20 a group of teenagers celebrated Hitler's birthday with a pogrom at a local synagogue, and on 18 February this year, Orenburg supporters of the Eurasian Youth Union of Alexander Dugin, a right-wing theoretician and leader, attacked a local office of Russian Family Planning Association in protest at "propaganda for sterilization, abortion and homosexuality".