My Two Days Working Undercover at Moscow’s Sadovod Market

Map of Western CIS/FSU and European Environs

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Eradzh Nidoev – November 7, 2013) [Photos here http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/my-2-days-working-undercover-at-moscows-sadovod-market/489045.html] It’s 6 a.m. and still dark outside. I am standing inside the sprawling Sadovod market on the 14th kilometer of the Moscow Ring Road in southeast Moscow. A sweeper is working one of the deserted rows of shops, trying to put things in order after yesterday’s […]

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Interfax: Patriarch Kirill: Biryulyovo events demonstrate government unwillingness to solve excessive migration problem

Patriarch Kirill file photo

MOSCOW. Oct 31 (Interfax) – The latest events in Moscow’s Biryulyovo district show that only the forces seeking to destroy Russia will gain from further disregard of the opinion of the Russian majority, said Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia. “The latest clashes in the Moscow Biryulyovo district demonstrated that a deaf ear turned by the authorities to the […]

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RIA Novosti: Putin Fires Slew of Top Interior Ministry Officials

Biryulyovo Riots file photo

MOSCOW, October 30 (RIA Novosti) ­ Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed a number of senior Interior Ministry officials on Wednesday, including the police head of the Moscow district that was the scene of violent nationalist riots earlier this month. Putin dismissed Alexander Podolny, the police chief of Moscow’s southern administrative district, from his post effective immediately, according to a Kremlin […]

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Police find 2,000 flats with illegal migrants in Moscow’s Biryulyovo

Kremlin and St. Basil's

(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – October 23, 2013) Police have uncovered some 2,000 apartments housing illegal migrants in the southern Moscow district of Biryulyovo, where nationalist riots broke out earlier this month over the stabbing death of a Russian by a suspected foreigner. The figures were the latest in an ongoing crackdown on migrants in the wake […]

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Life in Biryulevo after the murder and riots

Biryulyovo Riots file photo

(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Marina Obrazkova, RBTH – October 22, 2013) Russia may have to review its immigration policy in the wake of mass protests and rioting in Moscow. Last week, the southern Moscow district of Biryulevo was gripped by mass protests; the protesters demanded changes to Russian immigration policy. An RBTH correspondent looks at why the […]

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Investigators think Orhan Zeynalov driven by hooliganism to kill Biryulyovo resident

Kremlin and St. Basil's

(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 21, 2013) Orhan Zeynalov was driven by hooliganism when he murdered resident of Moscow’s Biryulyovo district Yegor Shcherbakov, the Russian Investigative Committee said. “Zeynalov has been charged with committing a murder driven by hooliganism,” Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax on Friday. According to investigators’ information, “Zeynalov denies the charges brought against him, and, as […]

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Presumption of innocence violated in Biryulyovo murder suspect’s case – Azeri Foreign Ministry

Map of Azerbaijan and South Caucasus Environs Including Portions of Armenia, Georgia, Russia, Iran, Caspian Sea

(Interfax – BAKU, October 17, 2013) Azerbaijan’s Embassy in Moscow has lodged a protest with the Russian Foreign Ministry over what it called violations of the rights of Azeri native Orkhan Zeynalov, who is suspected of killing ethnic Russian man Yegor Shcherbakov in the Biryulyovo district in southern Moscow. “The brutal detention and brutal treatment of Orkhan Zeynalov, whom they […]

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Biryulyovo Killing Suspect Confesses, Investigators Say

Biryulyovo Riots file photo

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn – October 17, 2013) The Azeri suspect in a deadly stabbing that triggered an anti-migrant riot in Moscow’s Biryulyovo district has confessed to the killing and requested an interpreter for his case, saying he “forgot Russian,” investigators said Wednesday. The news of the apparent language barrier further emphasizes the ethnic dimension of the […]

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Police Detain Suspect in Biryulyovo Killing

Biryulyovo Riots file photo

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – October 16, 2013) Police on Tuesday detained the suspect in a killing that provoked a wave of ethnically charged riots in Moscow’s Western Biryulyovo district on Sunday. The alleged murderer, Orkhan Zeinalov, 30, who came to Moscow more than 10 years ago from the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, was detained 100 […]

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Alekseyeva backs police actions in Biryulyovo

Lyudmila Alekseyeva file photo

(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 14, 2013) Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, said the police officers ‘ actions during riots in the Moscow district Western Biryulyovo were right. “In this case, what has occurred should be classified as hooliganism. It truly was hooliganism, and the law enforcement agencies should punish the perpetrators,” Alekseyeva told Interfax on Monday. […]

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Moscow – Riots and Working Class Antiheroes

Biryulyovo Riots file photo

(RIA Novosti – Natalia Antonova, Acting Editor-in-Chief of The Moscow News – October 15, 2013) There is a kind of sad poetry to Moscow’s working class neighborhoods. The box-like Khrushchev-era buildings that seem like gigantic children’s toys rather than real housing, the hilariously poor grammar on thousands of tacked up advertisements, the cracked pavement, the whispering trees, and  the stars […]

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Biryulyovo Residents Warn of More Unrest

Kremlin and St. Basil's

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – October 15, 2013) Surrounded by railroads, industrial estates and giant cooling towers from a local thermal plant, the Western Biryulyovo district where riots broke out Sunday oozes its own sense of disunion from the rest of Moscow ­ and residents say it has become a hostage to its own growing marginalization. “If […]

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