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On 16 December, Qobiljon Aliyev, a 10-year-old Tajik national, was stabbed to death at a school in Moscow Oblast by a ninth-grade student identified as Timofey K. According to reporting by Xabar.uz, the attacker had spent several days preparing for the assault, during which he composed an 11-page document titled “My Rage” — written in the spirit of ethnic and religious separatism — and distributed it to classmates before carrying out the killing. Witnesses say he asked the younger boy his nationality before striking.
Qobiljon’s family had moved to Russia from the Hisar district of Tajikistan four years earlier. His father died three years ago; his mother had been supporting the boy and his twin siblings by working as a cleaner at the same school where he was killed.
The case has drawn sharp responses from analysts and public figures in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, who argue the killing cannot be separated from a broader political environment in Russia that has systematically marginalised migrant workers and their families.
“This is not a routine school crime”
Journalist Ilyos Safarov wrote that the murder reflects “violence against non-Russians that has been growing in Russian society for years, and the mood that justifies that violence” — conditions he said create the ground for such tragedies. He added that he was disturbed to find the killing celebrated rather than mourned in parts of the Russian-language internet, describing a Telegram channel with nearly 286,000 subscribers that posted mockery of the dead child, with many users responding approvingly.
Blogger Shahnoza Soatova drew a direct line between the attack and years of anti-migrant rhetoric from Russian politicians, citing statements by lawmakers calling for migrant children to be excluded from schools, demands that migrants serve in the military or face expulsion, and the blocking of migrant taxi drivers and couriers from work platforms. “The country fighting ‘fascism’ in Ukraine has teenagers slaughtering people by ethnicity on the outskirts of Moscow,” she wrote. “I cannot find words to describe this.”
The Tajik political scientist Muhammad Shamsuddinov noted the timing with bitter irony: Qobiljon was killed in the anniversary year of the Soviet victory in the Second World War, one day after Russia’s foreign ministry published a report on the rights of compatriots abroad, and one day after the UN General Assembly — at Russia’s initiative — adopted a resolution against glorifying Nazism and fascism. He observed that Russia’s embassy in Tajikistan had continued posting on those documents while making no mention of the boy’s death.
A pattern analysts say predates this killing
Political scientist Kamoliddin Rabbimov recalled that between 2009 and 2013, skinhead groups in Russia were killing Uzbeks and Tajiks at a rate of 200 to 250 people per year, a phenomenon that received wide international coverage at the time. He argued that Russia’s self-image as a multi-ethnic federation sits in fundamental contradiction with its domestic promotion of Russian chauvinism and nationalism — a tension he said is currently held in check only by the Kremlin’s centralised authority. “When that force weakens, this contradiction will explode,” he wrote.
Rabbimov also noted what he described as a paradox: Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are among the most Russia-friendly societies in the post-Soviet space, yet Russian nationalists disproportionately target Tajiks and Uzbeks, while avoiding confrontation with Baltic or Ukrainian communities.
The Telegram channel Fayzbog’ offered a bleaker assessment of accountability, arguing that the author of the pro-violence content circulating online would face no legal consequences because, in its view, radical Russian nationalists now form a core part of the political base that the Kremlin depends on. The channel drew a comparison to the 2023 mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin, suggesting that such movements ultimately turn on their own patrons.
Broader data on hate crimes
The Russian investigative outlet Meduza has reported that hate-motivated crimes in Russia rose sharply after 2023. Research by the SOVA Centre, a Moscow-based organisation that monitors nationalism and xenophobia, has similarly documented an increase in racially motivated violence in Russia, according to Xabar.uz.
No official statement of condolence from Russian authorities was cited in the reporting. The Russian embassy in Tajikistan had not publicly acknowledged the killing as of the time of publication, according to Shamsuddinov.