The following is our monthly review of instances of xenophobia and radical nationalism, along with any government countermeasures, for January 2025.

In January 2025, we recorded 15 hate-motivated attacks. Some of these were committed on the eve of, and on, January 19 – the traditional day of actions commemorating people killed by neo-Nazis (more on these actions, below). The neo-Nazi group Walter88 claimed responsibility for some of these attacks.

This month, we became aware of three acts of xenophobic vandalism. Among these were the arsons of two cafes – called Halal and Samarkand – by masked adolescents in the Moscow Region town of Ramenskoye.

Activists from the “Russian Community” continued their traditional anti-migrant raids. Aside from these, the “Russian Community” and “Call of the Nation” demanded of the Ministry of the Interior, Investigative Committee and the television channel STS to devote attention to the activities of scenarist Nargiz Bagirzade, more specifically, to “check” her work for extremism and connections with foreign agents and foreign NGOs. The nationalists were upset by the series Mothers of Champions, shown on STS, in which ethnically Russian children allegedly “appear as oppressors who abuse young heroes from the CIS republics.” Meanwhile the “Forty Forties” movement, together with the “Russian Community,” Tomsk-area Cossacks and the organizations “Rivers of Kindness – Ob 70” and “Friends of Cheburashka” collected signatures petitioning for the cancelation of a concert by Lolita Milyavskaya on February 13 in Tomsk. The groups’ complaints stemmed from the singer’s participation in the infamous “naked party” in Moscow in 2023, as well as statements made years ago on Ukrainian television.

We can also report on five convictions issued in January, of 17 individuals, on the basis of xenophobic violence. The majority of defendants were sentenced to prison time ranging from eight to ten years for participation in mass anti-Israel rows at the Makhachkala airport in October 2023.

We recorded only one new case, against four individuals, opened in January.

This month, we also became aware of one conviction on the basis of xenophobically-motivated vandalism. A resident of the Krasnodar Krai was sentenced to 13 years for a series of arsons of various objects, including a shop, a house (in which migrants resided), and railroad equipment.

We noted three rulings, convicting the same number of defendants, for participation in extremist communities and organizations: they were one member of the Artpodgotovka group, and two supporters of AUE. We learned of one new criminal case raised in January for participation in the Russian Volunteer Corps, which Russian courts have designated as a terrorist organization.

Meanwhile, Telegram channels published a letter from Georgy Paramoshin, the administrator of the channel “NatsDem” who had been detained in March 2024. The letter explained that Paramoshin stands accused, inter alia, of organization of an extremist community (Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code (CC)).

We recorded 19 January convictions, of the same number of people, on the basis of aggressive public statements. Among them:

- Six people convicted under Article 205.2 CC (propaganda of terrorism) for statements made on social media expressing approval for the bombing of the Kerch Strait Bridge, attacks by the “Freedom of Russia” and “Russian Volunteer Corps” legions and the actions of Shamil Basaev and Dzhokhar Dudaev; and for calls for violence against police, government workers, and President Putin.

- Six people convicted under Article 280 CC (public calls for extremist activity) for statements on WhatsApp, Telegram, VKontakte and other unnamed social media calling for violence against natives of Tajikistan, Jews, ethnic Russians, Russian soldiers, police, members of the FSB and President Putin.

- One person convicted under a combined charge of these two articles, for statements published to social media, directed against police and government workers, as well as calls for the use of violence to effect a change of power in Russia.

- One inmate convicted under Article 354.1 CC (rehabilitation of Nazism) for showing other inmates a Nazi attributes and symbols, while stating approval for “crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War II, including those aimed at the extermination of peoples and various ethnic and social groups”.

- One person convicted under Article 282 CC for publication on VKontakte of comments inciting hatred towards police.

- Two people convicted under Article 282.4 CC (repeated demonstration of banned symbols). One of them, a colony inmate, demonstrated his own tattoo of a Nazi symbol to other inmates, while the second published banned symbols of a certain Ukrainian paramilitary organization. 

- A “Citizen of the USSR” convicted under Articles 282 and 282.4, as well as Part 1 of Article 280.3 (repeated discrediting of the use of the armed forces of Russia) and Article 329 CC (desecration of the Russian national flag). The conviction under Article 282 was connected with certain antisemitic publications on Odnoklassniki.

- One other person, a butcher at a city market, convicted under Part 2 of Article 213 CC (hooliganism motivated by hatred) for a scandal he caused at the market, during which he demonstrated “clear disrespect for society based on national hatred towards citizens of the Russian Federation, the social group of servicemen of the Russian Ministry of Defense performing their official duties in conducting the special military operation, and expressed himself with crude and obscene language, insulting Russian women” (he was convicted under several articles of the Criminal Code).

Ten people were sentenced to prison time, seven to suspended sentences, and two to fines.

A few of those given suspended sentences for statements were convicted under a combination of other articles of the Criminal Code or were already serving time on other sentences. In the absence of information about the circumstances that would have led toimprisonment, four people were sentenced as follows:

Aside from these, we recorded five new criminal cases opened in January on the basis of statements; each was against a single defendant.

We know of only one instance of fining in January, with the defendant found guilty under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO) (manufacture and distribution of banned materials) for the publication on VKontakte of the slogan “Russia for Russians,” which is entry 866 in the Federal List of Extremist Materials.

We have learned of 15 people sanctioned in January under Article 20.3 CAO, for publicly displaying Nazi or other prohibited symbols. Three people, including one prisoner, displayed their own tattoos with the swastika and other Nazi symbols; one drew the swastika on a security car in a park; another demonstrated a Nazi salute and shouted slogans glorifying Adolf Hitler. The rest posted prohibited images on Telegram, VKontakte, or unnamed social networks. The courts sentenced five offenders to administrative arrest, while the rest were fined.

We also have information with respect to five people who were sanctioned in January on the basis of aggressive statements under Article 20.3.1 CAO (incitement to hatred). The reason was comments on VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and other unnamed social networks directed against natives of Central Asia and migrants in general, as well as non-Russians, non-whites, non-Orthodox people and indigenous residents of Russia. Two were sentenced to administrative arrest, while three were fined.

The Federal List of Extremist Materials was not updated in January. At the same time, we learned at the end of the month, the Bashkortostan prosecutor’s office submitted to the Supreme Court of the Republic an administrative claim seeking the designation as extremist material of Ruslan Gabbasov’sbookNotes of a Bashkir Nationalist. Kuk Bure, published in January 2024 and telling the history of the local nationalist organization "Kuk Bure."

Nor was the Federal List of Extremist Organizations updated in January 2025. However, an update appears inevitable given the January 20 ruling by the Tula Regional Court designating the “Cyborgs” fan club of the Arsenal football team extremist and banning its activities.

On January 11, the FSB added “an international organization created in the form of a public movement, ‘Forum of Free States of Post-Russia’ and its structural subdivisions” to the list of terrorist organizations under item 60, 172 organizations in total. These are associations of the most diverse types, some of which may not correspond to any existing groups at all. The banned “subdivisions” of the Forum include Russian nationalists ("Northern Brotherhood", "Zalesskaya Republic", "Smolenskaya Republic", etc.).

Commemorative events were held in 37 cities across Russia and abroad on January 19, the date of the 2009 murder of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova by neo-Nazis.

In Moscow, several dozen people gathered at the site of the murder on Prechistenka Street, bringing flowers, portraits, candles, and photographs of the murdered anti-fascists. A group of nationalists was on duty near the metro, and 40 minutes after the start of the gathering, police detained one of them. When the participants and police officers left the scene, neo-Nazis scattered leaflets on the improvised memorial with portraits of members of the Combat Organization of Russian Nationalists (BORN) Nikita Tikhonov and Evgenia Khasis, who were convicted of the murders.

In the evening, the Open Spacecoworking space hosted a screening of the film L'ultimavoltachesiamostati bambini, and a charity market. Near OpenSpace, neo-Nazis attacked two anti-fascists: one of them was shot with a spray can, and the other was hit with a hammer.

In total, the actions took place in 29 cities of Russia, including Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as Pavlovsk, Barnaul, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk, Kazan, Kemerovo, Kaliningrad, Kaluga, Kostroma, Krasnoyarsk, Kursk, Murmansk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Penza, Rostov-on-Don and Azov, Ryazan, Tambov, Chelyabinsk and Yaroslavl. Actions abroad were held in Baku, Berlin, Belgrade, Warsaw, Yerevan, Paris, Chisinau and Pattaya. The participants held film screenings, organized spontaneous memorials with photographs of the victims, stood in pickets with posters and marched, pasted stickers and lit candles near the funeral portraits and distributed food and leaflets.