A student from Kalmykia has complained that she spent about five hours at a police station after being detained near the Zyablikovo metro station in Moscow. She only recently—nearly a month later—shared details of the June 11 incident with journalists from the "Ostorozhno, Moskva" Telegram channel.
According to the young woman, police officers stopped her near the metro station and demanded to see her documents. She claims that one of the officers failed to introduce himself or show his service ID, as required by the Law on Police. Initially, she was told it was a routine document check. However, after she objected to the officers' actions, she was told she was allegedly a wanted person.
She was then placed in a police vehicle. She expected to be shown a wanted notice or have the reasons for her detention explained; instead, she was taken to the police station without warning. As a result of the incident, the student missed an exam.
At the station, she says, she was forbidden from filming, with officers citing internal regulations and the building's status as a restricted-access facility. After she refused to delete the video, her phone was confiscated, and she was placed in a holding cell.
The student claims that during her time at the station, she was not provided with food, was denied access to the restroom for a long period, and was not allowed to contact her relatives; meanwhile, her sister was refused entry to the building.
Later, a report on petty hooliganism was drawn up against her. The document states that she disturbed the public order and used profanity. The student contested the charges and noted her disagreement in the report. However, she says the copy of the document she was given was virtually unreadable.
Before her release, the officers allegedly demanded once again that she delete the video recording. According to her, they also made comments about her appearance and level of knowledge.
"Not once did they ask any questions about my actions. They judged me solely by my face and tried to teach me a lesson," the student recounted.
She is currently challenging the officers' actions, alleging abuse of authority and ethnic discrimination. She says the responses to her inquiries from the Ministry of Internal Affairs were merely perfunctory, and her complaint to the police department chief regarding the issued citation was never reviewed within the legally mandated timeframe. She now intends to appeal to the prosecutor's office.
This student's story is far from unique. In recent years, there has been a rise in complaints regarding biased treatment of people from national republics and migrants in Moscow and other major Russian cities.
Such practices have occurred previously in Russia's recent history. In the late 1990s and early 2000s—particularly after the outbreak of the Second Chechen War—natives of the North Caucasus republics were routinely subjected to document checks based solely on their appearance.
Officers from what was then the *militsiya* (police) would stop people on the street, single them out from the crowd, and demand to see their documents. If individuals lacked Moscow residency registration—which city authorities continued to demand despite a Constitutional Court ruling declaring the practice unconstitutional—they were frequently taken to police stations.
According to many of those affected and their relatives, these checks were often accompanied by misconduct on the part of law enforcement officers. Fearing potential provocations, hundreds of people from Chechnya walked around Moscow with their pockets sewn shut to prevent drugs, grenades, or other illicit items from being planted on them.
As the victims themselves described, the scheme often followed the same pattern: a person would be stopped, an illicit item would be planted on them, they would be detained, and then a sum of money would be named in exchange for avoiding criminal prosecution. If relatives managed to raise the required funds, the detainee would be released. If that was not possible, those detained—according to their families—often found themselves the subjects of fabricated criminal cases and ended up imprisoned for years.
More than two decades have passed since those events. Yet, reports of ethnic discrimination continue to surface today.
While selective checks and ethnically motivated persecution in the early 2000s were attributed to a "counter-terrorism agenda," ethnic profiling is now intensifying against the backdrop of anti-migrant rhetoric and the activities of nationalist organizations.
One of the most prominent manifestations of this trend is the activity of the "Russian Community" (*Russkaya Obshchina*).
The "Russian Community" is an ultranationalist organization with hundreds of branches across the country. Recently, its activists have been regularly conducting raids against migrants from Central Asian countries and participating in operations to "identify illegal immigrants"—either jointly with the police or with their tacit approval.
