One person killed, dozens injured over ten days

The period between end-July and early August 2006 in Russia was marked by an outburst of nationalist violence, leaving at least two dozen casualties, including one death.

The violence was linked primarily to the celebration of the Airborne Troops Day on 2 August - traditionally on this day open-air markets, where traders are from the Caucasus, Central Asia, China and Vietnam, are raided. This year, the raids affected at least six Russian cities: Irkutsk, Kazan, Moscow, Novosibirsk, and Togliatti (Samara Oblast), injuring at least fifteen people. In Moscow and Togliatti, nationalist veterans of airborne troops were reported to attack people of "non-Slav" appearance. Incidents of goods being "confiscated" by drunken veterans in open-air markets are so common that they are not even reported as news.

Skinheads have been increasingly active in Moscow over the same period. On 30 July, two Iranians were attacked and beaten outside Frunzenskaya Metro Station. On 2 August, a skinhead shot a gas pistol, wounding a non-Slav looking airborne troops veteran going home from the celebration. Later on the same day, in the South-West of Moscow, a 19 year-old man from Uzbekistan was stabbed to death, and a Turkish national wounded. On 5 August, a group of teenagers with shaved heads, wearing typical :skinhead; attire - dark jackets, heavy military boots - attacked three people from Dagestan; the victims sustained multiple stabbed wounds, two of them had to be hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.

Besides skinheads, incidents of spontaneous aggressive nationalism of apparently apolitical Russians have been increasingly reported. On 25 July 2006, in Novosibirsk, a local resident spent an hour shooting his hunting gun at passers-by who looked like they came from the Caucasus; before being apprehended, he had made five shots and hit his targets twice: the victims - two men and one woman - were hospitalized with multiple wounds in their legs.