Russian Think Tank Says Ethnically Motivated Attacks Continue

Russian police detain a man after a nationalism-fueled protest in the Biryulyovo district of Moscow in October.

MOSCOW -- A Moscow-based think tank monitoring xenophobia and extremism says ethnically motivated attacks continue apace in the country.

According to the latest report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis, 19 people have been killed and 168 have been injured in ethnically motivated attacks in Russia so far this year.

The report says ethnically motivated violence took place in dozens of regions around Russia but that the location of the deadliest attacks was Moscow, where seven people were killed and 53 injured by ultranationalists.

Three people from the Caucasus and Central Asia were killed and 26 beaten in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg. The Lipetsk region saw the third-highest reports of violence, with three people killed and nine beaten in ethnically motivated attacks.

Sova said in its December 2012 report that 18 people had been killed and 171 injured across Russia in such violence.