The use of violence, both physical and symbolic, against non-Russian peoples, particularly those from the Caucasus and Central Asia, is becoming increasingly evident.
Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Turkmens are at the center of a systematic campaign of intimidation, discrimination, and stigmatization. Behind this wave of hatred, xenophobia, and Islamophobia stands none other than the leadership of the country—first and foremost, Vladimir Putin himself.
President Putin, drawing on the imperial reflexes of the Russian state, is perpetuating traditional mechanisms of rule through exclusion, suppression, and forced assimilation. This approach is characteristic of post-imperial societies that have failed to build inclusive, civic identities. Only now, this policy has taken on particularly brutal and cynical forms.
If a state with a nuclear arsenal and aspirations to great power status unleashes devastating violence against an ethnically and culturally close population in Ukraine—destroying cities and civilian infrastructure—then how can one be surprised at how it treats non-Russians and Muslims?
Since the collapse of the USSR, chauvinism and Islamophobia in Russia have reached new heights. A country that conducted ethnic cleansing in Chechnya is now expanding that policy to other peoples. What was once confined to the periphery is now happening in the center—with the applause of federal television.
We all remember the skinhead movement of the 1990s and its particularly cynical violence against people from the Caucasus and Central Asia. It was presented as spontaneous. But we are not naïve—we know full well that Russian security services were behind it. Today, there is no need for skinheads. Their role has been assumed—openly and with even greater brutality—by police, OMON, and FSB officers, acting with a sense of complete impunity.
What is happening is not only a tragedy for the peoples being targeted. It is also a tragedy for the Russian people and the Russian state, which once claimed a legacy of humanism.
A particularly sinister role in this structure is played by the Russian Orthodox Church. Not as a moral compass, but as an ideological accomplice to the repressive machine. It not only remains silent about the violence—it legitimizes it, cloaking it in a so-called spiritual framework.
The events in Yekaterinburg, where Azerbaijanis became victims of a full-blown punitive operation, are no accident. They are a symptom—a sign that the old OMON methods of the 1990s have returned, now without masks or restraints. New legalistic terms like “ethnic criminality” are just attempts to justify the Kremlin’s long-standing dream: to portray every non-Russian as a default threat. And thus—purge them, expel them, degrade them.
Russia is laying the groundwork for large-scale ethnic cleansing—and doing so openly.
Even under Stalin, torture took place secretly in prison camps. Today, in Russia, people are mutilated in public. After the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, detainees were paraded in Moscow’s Basmanny Court: one had his eye gouged out, another had his ear cut off and was forced to eat it, a third was beaten using a military field telephone. All bore bruises, bandages, signs of strangulation. For this, security officers were awarded medals “For Bravery.” What is happening now exceeds even Stalin’s repressions in cruelty.
All of this is a continuation of the same policy. Russia stood behind the tragedy of January 20, the Khojaly genocide, and the thirty-year occupation of Azerbaijani lands—and still does.
Nothing has changed. Only the mask has.
