By Ria Novosti, [RxPG] Moscow, Feb 10 - Law enforcement agencies said Saturday they are investigating an attack, apparently by skinheads, on a Newsweek magazine correspondent at a Moscow metro station.
A police spokesman said Aidar Nuribayev was assaulted and beaten by four young men, who were apparently skinheads, at 11.30 p.m. local time - Friday at Tverskaya metro station in central Moscow.
He said Nuribayev sustained minor injuries and refused treatment, adding that the attackers fled the scene before police arrived.
A surge in violence targeting foreigners with non-Slavic features has prompted Russian and foreign human rights groups in recent months to raise concerns over the alarming spread of racist and xenophobic attitudes in the country.
The problem came into the spotlight after the murder of two Russians in an interethnic brawl in Kondopoga town in north-western Russia sparked a wave of racial violence last September. The local community accused authorities of failing to protect them or safeguard their interests, and of taking bribes from criminal immigrant groups.
In a recent race-hate case, a court in the eastern Russian city of Yekaterinburg handed down prison terms to two young members of a skinhead group convicted of a racially motivated attack on a Somali television reporter.
The Interior Ministry previously said it is monitoring 150 extremist groups in Russia, especially race-hate groups, which have a total membership of around 10,000.
About 80 percent of the extremist groups' members are under 30, and most are based in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Samara and Voronezh Regions, according to the ministry's data.
Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier said that the rise in race-hate crime is a disgrace, and demanded that police take radical measures to improve the situation.
