Tajikistan denounces ‘ethnic hatred’ stabbing of schoolboy in Russia

A stock image of a youth's hands in handcuffs. (File photo/7713Photography/GettyImages)

Tajikistan on Wednesday denounced an “ethnic hatred” attack in Russia, in a rare criticism of its ally a day after a 10-year-old Tajik schoolboy was killed by an older pupil near Moscow.

Russia’s main investigative body, the Investigative Committee, said the 15-year-old suspect was detained and in custody after the attack in Gorki, a village west of Moscow in the Odintsovo district.

Authorities in Dushanbe confirmed the victim was Tajik and summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the attack.

The foreign ministry said the attack was “motivated by ethnic hatred”.

The ambassador was handed a note “demanding that Russia conduct an immediate, objective, and impartial investigation into this tragic incident”, the ministry said in a statement.

In a separate statement, the Tajik interior ministry also said it feared the incident would “serve as a pretext for incitement and provocation by certain radical nationalist groups to commit similar crimes”.

The Russian foreign ministry expressed “its deepest condolences to the Tajik side, the families of the deceased, and the victims of the attack”, its spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was quoted as saying on the ministry’s website.

“The Russian side will do everything necessary to ensure an impartial and objective investigation of the incident,” she added.

According to Russian media, including newspapers Komsomolskaya Pravda and Kommersant, the alleged attacker subscribed to neo-Nazi channels and had sent his classmates a racist manifesto a few days before the incident.

Hundreds of thousands of Tajiks work in Russia, many of them holding Russian citizenship.

According to the World Bank, remittances to their relatives back in Tajikistan account for nearly half the GDP of the Central Asian country.

Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, some Central Asian migrants have looked for work in other countries instead of Russia.

Moscow has tried to recruit Central Asian migrants into the Russian army to fight in Ukraine.

Russia has also hardened its migration policies since a 2024 attack on a concert hall that killed 149 people, with Moscow arresting Tajik citizens over the attack.