In another recent attack targeting people with non-Slavic features, the Azerbaijani citizen was brutally beaten with baseball bats and robbed February 24 in southeast Moscow.
"During the attack, the thugs chanted that Russia is only for ethnic Russians," police said, indicating they suspected that this was a racially motivated attack.
Police are also investigating the detainees' possible involvement in similar race-hate crimes on Moscow streets and subway.
A wave of racially-motivated assaults has swept Russia in recent years, causing concerns among Russian and foreign human rights groups over the alarming spread of racist and xenophobic sentiments in the country.
Two major incidents occurred in the Russian capital this month. On February 9, a Newsweek magazine correspondent, Aidar Nuribayev, was assaulted in the Moscow subway. The attackers fled when police arrived.
The director general of a regional energy company in Ingushetia in Russia's North Caucasus, Batyr Kurkiyev, was found unconscious February 19 in central Moscow after being severely beaten. He died several days later in the hospital from sustained wounds.
