A Russian MP suffered a serious head wound after being attacked by migrants, as ethnic tensions in the country reach boiling point.
Mikhail Matveev is a member of the Communist Party in the Duma – stacked with Putin loyalists. He was travelling by car in his hometown of Samara, in southwestern Russia.
As he was driving through the city, the Duma deputy spotted a group of migrants surrounding and harassing a passerby.
He stopped his car and approached the group while recording the incident on his mobile phone.
The politician showed the migrants his ID card and told them to stop, as he tried to play peacemaker.
His intervention enraged the migrants, however, and provoked a violent response from them.
One of the migrants took a stick and bashed him over the head, before trying to run away.
The MP grabbed one of his assailants, while the other two were later arrested by police.
“They were beating people,” he said in a video recording on his phone. “When I came out and showed my ID, they immediately hit me on the head with a stick. I was seriously injured there.”
He branded the attack as a typical incident of “migrant lawlessness”.
The politician said that in the “best Russian traditions” he had to wait over 40 minutes before police and an ambulance arrived at the scene.
Matveev has previously predicted a clash of civilisations in Russia between Muslims and Orthodox Christians.
“They [radical Muslims] are not satisfied with Russia in a secular form, and they are not satisfied with the role of Orthodox civilisation,” he told Parliament during a debate in January.
“And, of course, all this is very alarming indeed because we see how more and more of our living space in Russia is being reclaimed by them.
“I think that when the Special Military Operation is over, and half a million or more of our guys return from the front, the main clashes like this will begin.”
Russia has over 190 ethnic groups nationwide, a legacy of its imperial past and historical conquests.
Almost 20 percent of the country’s 144 million people are non-Russian in ethnicity, with ten million identifying as Muslims.
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