Neo-Nazi stabs to death Uzbek man

An Uzbek man was stabbed to death in Moscow. Not long ago Moscow has seen a spike in racially motivated attacks.

Photo: Neo-Nazi stabs to death Uzbek man

Two men assaulted the man on Sunday, stabbing him in the chest and neck, police said.

On Saturday, a crowd of teenagers armed with baseball bats assaulted and killed Sergei Nikolayev, a 46-year-old professional chess player with an Asian appearance from the Siberian region of Yakutia, police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeyev said.

Another group of teenagers in the same southwestern neighborhood on Saturday stabbed and seriously wounded another native of Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, Gildeyev said.

Galina Kozhevnikova of the Sova center, which monitors hate crimes in Russia, said Moscow has seen a well organized wave of racially motivated attacks recently.

She said the attacks could have been carried out by supporters of Maxim Martsinkevich, the leader of a neo-Nazi group called Forum 18, who was arrested in July and is awaiting trial on charges of inciting racial hatred. Martsinkevich also goes by the nickname Tesak, or The Cleaver.

Rights groups say Russian authorities have done little to combat xenophobia. Many apparent hate crimes are treated as simple hooliganism, which carries a far milder punishment.

More than 50 people have been killed and 400 wounded in apparent hate crimes this year in Russia, according to the Sova center.