In September 2012, three people in Moscow and the Nizhny Novgorod region were injured as a result of racist or neo-Nazi attacks. This puts the total numbers related to such attacks since the beginning of this year at 11 people killed and 132 injured. One person was the target of a serious death threat. So far this year, racist events have been recorded in 23 of the country’s regions.
On September 15, nationalists took part in a March of Millions, a general opposition march associated with the Russian protest movement that began last winter; this was the third such march. However, the number of nationalists in attendance was very small – in Moscow, it was roughly 250. There were parallel demonstrations in Novosibirsk, Ryazan, Saint Petersburg, Tambov, Volgograd, and Ulyanovsk.
Additionally, Russian nationalists continued with their so-called “Kondopoga technology” conflict-promotion tactic. The phenomenon, which has become national, essentially consists of stoking widespread aggression against non-Slavic minorities in response to or retaliation for an isolated incident. In this instance, they attempted to co-opt a Sergiyev Posad biker rally commemorating the life of Leonid Frolov, an ethnic Russian killed in a brawl at a local market on June 30 of this year. As Frolov’s assailant was an ethnic Azeri (who has reportedly been in police custody since September 19), nationalists attempted, unsuccessfully, to join the rally. Eleven people were detained as a result.
September saw no fewer than eight acts of neo-Nazi vandalism. In all, we have recorded 70 acts of racist and other ideological vandalism in 32 regions of Russia so far this year.
We did not become aware of any information for September regarding criminal convictions related to cases of hate-motivated racist violence. In any case we have recorded no fewer than 15 convictions on such charges, against 42 individuals in 11 regions of the country, since the beginning of this year.
At last seven people were convicted in as many rulings on xenophobic propaganda charges this month. They were in Moscow and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area; and the Orel, Ulyanovsk, and Vologda regions; and the Komi and Chuvash republics. To date this year, 60 xenophobic propaganda convictions have been issued against 79 people in 36 Russian regions.
The Federal List of Extremist Materials was updated five times this month, on September 3, 10, 16, 26 and 27. The updates extended the list to include entries 1427–1460. These include online publications by ultraconservative Islamist groups and a few websites publishing ethnically xenophobic content.
