At a memorial service this week outside the concert hall where Islamic extremists are suspected of carrying out a deadly terror attack, one of Russia’s most popular pro-Kremlin rappers warned “right-wing and far-right groups” not to “incite ethnic enmities.”
In a televised briefing on the attack, Russia’s top prosecutor, Igor Krasnov, pledged that his agency was paying “special attention” to preventing “inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts”.
And when President Vladimir V. Putin made his first comments about the tragedy last weekend, he said he would not allow anyone to “sow the poisonous seeds of hatred, panic and discord in our multi-ethnic society.”
In the wake of the attack near Moscow that killed 139 people last Friday, there has been a recurring theme in the Kremlin’s response: the fear that the tragedy could ignite ethnic strife in Russia. While Mr Putin and his security chiefs have accused Ukraine – without evidence – of helping to organize the killing, the fact that the four arrested suspects in the attack are from the predominantly Muslim Central Asian country of Tajikistan has sparked anti-immigrant rhetoric on the Internet.
For Mr. Putin, the problem is magnified by the competing priorities of his war in Ukraine. Members of Muslim minorities make up a significant proportion of Russian soldiers who fight and die. Immigrants from Central Asia provide much of the labor force that keeps Russia’s economy running and its military supply chain running.
But many of Mr. Putin’s staunchest supporters of the invasion are Russian nationalists whose popular, pro-war blogs on the Telegram messaging app have been filled with xenophobia in the days since the attack.
“Borders should be closed as much as possible, if not closed,” said one. “The situation has now shown that Russian society is on the brink.”
As a result, the Kremlin is walking a fine line, trying to keep war supporters happy by promising tougher action against immigrants while trying to prevent social tensions from escalating. The potential for violence was highlighted in October when an anti-Semitic mob stormed an airport in the predominantly Muslim Russian region of Dagestan to confront a passenger plane arriving from Israel.
“The authorities see this as a very big, serious threat,” Sergei Markov, a pro-Putin political analyst in Moscow and a former Kremlin adviser, said in a telephone interview. “That’s why every effort is being made now to calm public opinion.”
In the middle are millions of migrant workers and ethnic Russians who are already facing an increase on city streets in the kind of racial profiling that was common even before the attack. Svetlana Gannushkina, a longtime Russian human rights defender, said on Tuesday that she was trying to help a Tajik man who had just been detained because the police were “looking for Tajiks” and “she saw a person with such an appearance”.
“They need the migrants as cannon fodder” for the Russian military “and as labor,” Ms. Gannushkina said in a telephone interview from Moscow. “And when they need to fulfill the plan to fight terrorism, they will also focus on this group” of Tajiks, he said.
Nearly one million citizens of Tajikistan, which has a population of about 10 million, were registered in Russia as migrant workers last year, according to government statistics. They are among the millions of migrant workers in Russia from all the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, a driving force in Russia’s economy, from food delivery and construction to factory work.
The manager of a food business in Moscow that employs Tajiks said in an interview that the mood in the Russian capital reminded her of the 2000s, when Muslims from the Caucasus region faced widespread discrimination in the wake of terrorist attacks and wars in Chechnya. Tajiks in Moscow are so worried they don’t go out at all, she said, asking to remain anonymous because she feared repercussions from talking to a Western journalist.
“There is already no job offer because of SVO,” he added, using the common Russian acronym for the Kremlin’s “special military operation” against Ukraine. “And now it will be even worse.”
Ethnic tensions have been a constant challenge for Mr Putin during his nearly quarter-century rule, but he has also tried to use them to his geopolitical advantage. Mr Putin’s rise to power has been shaped by the war in the southern, mainly Muslim region of Chechnya, where Russia has tried to brutally stamp out separatist and extremist movements. He also helped fuel separatism in places like the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, taking part in long-running conflicts there to expand Russia’s influence.
Mr. Putin’s government is already trying to show the public that it is ready to take action against immigrants. A top lawmaker proposed Tuesday to ban firearms sales to newly naturalized Russian citizens. Mr. Krasnov, the top prosecutor, said the number of crimes committed by immigrants would increase by 75 percent in 2023, without giving specifics. “We need to develop balanced solutions based on the need to ensure the safety of citizens and the economic feasibility of using foreign labor,” he added.
Russia is not trying to keep foreigners out, but has made it easier for immigrants to become Russian citizens since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A primary reason appears to be the military’s need for soldiers in Ukraine and police Raids targeting migrant workers to force them to register for military service have become common in Russian news reports.
As a result, Tajik immigrants in Moscow now fear not only deportation but the possibility of being pressured into service in Ukraine, said Saidanvar, 25, a Tajik human rights activist who recently left Moscow. He asked that his last name not be used for security reasons.
“Tajiks are really afraid,” he said in an interview, “that the Russian authorities will start sending Tajiks to the front en masse to fight as a kind of revenge against our Tajik people.”
In his wartime speeches, Mr Putin often referred to Russia as a multi-ethnic state – a legacy of the Russian and Soviet empires. In March 2022, after describing the heroism of a Dagestan soldier, Mr Putin listed some of Russia’s ethnic groups, saying: “I am Lak, I am Dagestani, I am Chechen, Ingush, Russian, Tatar. , a Jew, a Mordvin, an Ossetian”.
In his rhetoric about his conflict with the West, Mr Putin has often accused Russia’s rivals of trying to foment ethnic strife in Russia. This was his response to the Dagestan airport uprising in October, which he baselessly blamed on Western intelligence services and Ukraine. It is also increasingly at the center of his response to Friday’s terror attack, which Islamic State claimed responsibility for and US officials say was carried out by a branch of the extremist group. On Tuesday, the head of Russia’s domestic intelligence service claimed that Ukrainian, British and American spies may be behind it.
The result appears to be that the Kremlin is seeking to refocus anger over the attack on Ukraine while trying to show the public that it is taking immigration concerns into account.
“They will grab the Tajiks and blame the Ukrainians,” said Ms Gannushkina, the human rights defender. “It was clear from the beginning.”
But Mr. Markov, the pro-Kremlin analyst, said he sees tensions over immigration policy even within Mr. Putin’s powerful security establishment. Anti-immigrant law enforcement and intelligence officials, he said, are at odds with a military-industrial complex that needs immigrants.
“It’s a contradiction,” he said. “And this terrorist attack has greatly exacerbated that problem.”
