A preliminary investigation concluded that the explosive device was a home-made concoction comprised of a glass jar filled with a chemical mixture. The motive for the attack was unclear, but officials suspected a random act of hooliganism.

“Two young people, aged 16-17 and of Slavic appearance, walked into the church, left a bag and fled,” a law enforcement source told the ITAR-TASS news agency. “The bag started smoking, and the church officials tried to carry it out of the church when the explosion went off.”

The ensuing explosion was equivalent to around 50 grams of TNT. The two victims, aged 50 and 62, received treatment for burns and splintered glass, and their condition was listed as fair. Around 50 people attending the church services were unharmed.

Officials of Russia’s Orthodox Church were shocked by what had happened. “There have been church burnings, attacks on the clergy, but explosions—this was a first,” said Vladimir Vigilyansky, the director of the Moscow Patriarchate’s press-service.

“Our society’s [morality] is in a very deplorable state,” the priest said.

The victims, students who are not ethnically Slavic, hail from the Middle East, India, and Turkmenistan. One student remains hospitalized, and will have permanent scarring to his face. He told investigators that three young people jumped him in a local park in broad daylight.

The assailants have been described by other victims as young Slavic men, dressed in all black with covered faces. It was unclear whether the attacks were connected, although the victims described their attackers similarly. Separate assaults on Russian nationals from the Caucasus mountain regions have also been reported.

Law enforcement officials are conducting an investigation, but have not yet apprehended any suspects.

Over the past two weeks, two massive street brawls between ethnic Russians, Chechens and Azeris in the town have left two people dead, and eleven people seriously injured. The new head of the local militsiya, sent from the city of Perm to replace the old police chief, was also attacked and beaten by unknown assailants.

Law enforcement officials have meanwhile denied that the fights were ethnically motivated, and have blamed alcohol and individual enmity.

The first brawl took place in the final days of July, and was apparently started by a construction accident. A construction crane, operated by a Russian worker intoxicated on the job, fell onto a company building, killing an Azeri manager. The Russian was later violently assaulted, which set off sparks of anger in local workers and residents. The tension escalated further when the Azeri leadership of the company withheld back wages from some workers.

Combatants brought edged weapons to the ensuing street battle between Russian and Azeris. As result, seven people received knife wounds and two later perished in the hospital. Regional authorities then sent Perm police chief Yury Gorlov to investigate, and replaced a number of officers among the Karagai militsiya’s administration.

A second ethnic fight took place on the night of August 6th, when around 20 Russians and Chechens attacked one another at a local cafe. Law enforcement authorities later described it as a trivial drunken brawl, and did not file any charges. According to a police press-conference, the fight started over a woman.

Rashid Nurgaliev, the Minister of Internal Affairs, explained the agency’s plans:

“The militsiya always works for pre-emption. That’s why measures will be taken, so that there won’t be mass disorders or any kind of confrontations.”

Nurgaliev noted that the extra measures will correspond with established laws. “Everything must be within the framework of the Constitution and the country’s applicable legislation.”

This year, the Jewish Passover holiday happens to fall on the same date. As a response, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR) plans to institute stricter security at synagogues and community centers, according to the Fontanka.ru online newspaper.

For more than 20 years, starting at the end of the 1980s, radical nationalist and neo-nazi groups have used Hitler’s birthday as an excuse to lead public demonstrations. Every year, the day is marked by widespread attacks by skinheads on foreign citizens, as well as migrants from the Caucasus region and Central Asia. The neo-fascists also target Jewish sites and monuments.

Rising levels of hate crimes in recent years have led some community leaders to conclude that the police have turned a blind eye to their concerns. After a recent spate of ethnically motivated murders in February, a Moscow town meeting concluded that both the militsiya and the judicial system were dealing too lightly with skinheads and neo-nazis.

The most recent victims, two men of Kyrgyz and Azeri background, were stabbed to death in separate instances on Tuesday night. The crimes are considered ethnically motivated, as nothing was stolen from the victims’ bodies.

According to the Itar-Tass news agency, many community leaders feel that authorities are turning a blind eye to the wave of killings and assaults. At a meeting with Moscow police, ethnic leaders complained that most attacks against dark-skinned people were simply considered hooliganism, and that the police had failed in their promises of helping ethnic minorities. They added that the judicial system dealt with hate crimes too lightly.

Citizens of the former Soviet Republics living in Russia, as well as Russian nationals from the North Caucasus region have noted a rising incidence of assaults from ultra-nationalists and skinheads.

According to the Moscow Times, twenty-three people have been killed and more than fifty injured in ethnically-motivated attacks around the country since the start of the year. Fourteen of those murders took place in Moscow.

Vladimir Pronin, Moscow’s police chief, spoke with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper on what he felt were the reasons for the rising crime rate:

“You may also add the collapse of the system of vocational training. We’ve lost our working class youth. There you have it. Teenagers have nothing to busy themselves with. No positive ideology has been offered. There is no way for them to let off aggression, and there are newcomers and guest workers all around. The result is clear. Mandatory high-school education has been canceled in fact. Few parents care if their teenage son finishes high school or not…”

Itar-Tass noted that other people of color, including immigrants and expats from East Asia and Africa, were also being threatened by skinheads. Anonymous sources within major international corporations have revealed to the Izvestiya newspaper that their firms have unofficial policies wherein Asian and African specialists are not hired for the Russia office. Simply put, their safety cannot be guaranteed.