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Putin’s unofficial farewell meeting with his CIS colleagues in Moscow accentuated a chaotic pattern of topics: Kosovan undesirable independence, introducing Putin’s favoured successor Medvedev, growing xenophobic attacks in Moscow and perspectives of inter-CIS co-operations. On the latter Dmitriy Medvedev assured his presumably future counterparts that the existing "amicable warm atmosphere" will remain further on.

The summit highlighted Putin’s rare acceptance of numerous facts of xenophobic attacks on dark-skinned residents of Russia. The Russian Interior Ministry has confirmed to agencies that in 2007 as many as 356 cases were filed on crimes based on ethnic motives – 2.6 times more than in 2004. In January there were six such murders in Moscow only, SOVA human rights centre reports.

The same source gives further details of fascist attacks in Moscow since February 1. 22 days of the current month have seen an increased rate of xenophobic assaults with deadly ends: unknown assailants have fatally stabbed six Kyrgyz, two Azeris, two Kabardino-Balkarians, one Tajik and one Uzbek.

"We will do everything to make sure these criminals are found, tried and punished," Reuters quotes Vladimir Putin. "Citizens in the CIS, including Russia, are now encountering a resurgence of xenophobia, intolerance and even threats to their lives."

It’s not all about groups of Russian young men sporting clean shaved heads that find, beat, stab and kill non-Slavic people across the country. These attacks are usually filmed and posted on the Internet. But Russian police racist attitude does not get videotaped for the public. Tajiks top the list of their victims. 76% of Tajik guest workers employed in Russia have experienced abuse or humiliation of one sort or another, according to Bashkirov & Partners survey institution’s figures. Of them, 53% were insulted or fined by police or migration officials, and 18% were the targets of nationalist threats.

Vladimir Putin said, nearly all his CIS counterparts had raised the issue during their personal talks with him. But agencies reported only the Kyrgyz President’s relevant concerns discussed at his face to face talk with Putin. The meeting coincided with a huge demonstration in Bishkek’s Victory Square in protest at recent racist attacks on Kyrgyz citizens in Russia. And the Kyrgyz parliament issued a statement condemning the deadly assaults. On February 5, 2008 the Kyrgyz news service Kabar reported that 350 citizens of Kyrgyzstan died in Russia in 2007. It is not known precisely how many of them were victims of hate crimes.

Seemingly, Tajik victims slightly outnumber their Kyrgyz counterparts. According to a Regnum report, there were 356 deaths of Tajik immigrants in Russia n 2007, of whom 69 were murdered – 27 more murder cases in contrast to 2006. Adil Nurmakov of Global Voices Online compares the figure to 450 US casualties in the Afghanistan campaign.

But neither Tajik parliament issued a protest statement nor did the deaths take people to Dushanbe squares. In 2006 a court in St. Petersburg sentenced seven teenagers accused of assaulting and murdering a 9-year-old Tajik girl to prison terms ranging from 18 to 5 and a half years. The murderers were convicted of "hooliganism". The victim's father publicly protested the lenient sentences, but Tajik Embassy’s reaction was simply "a deep disappointment" with the court verdict.

As far as we know, based on news agencies' reports from Moscow, Emomali Rahmon did not try to spoil Putin’s jubilant mood with his grievance against Russian fascists. Even without those bitter facts, he had had a couple of mood-spoilers with him already. Rahmon’s probably last meeting with his sole protector took place under different field conditions: he has partially lost his superior’s unique care and his partly unshielded body is still shivering with recent cold snap. The summit provided Rahmon with a perfect opportunity to hand in his assistance plea to Putin.
 
He literally rushed to the Kremlin, hence was he the second CIS president to meet the Tsar before the Summit. Looking through Rahmon’s official letter Vladimir Putin declared that Russia had helped the Central Asian country already by sending a few diesel electric generating systems. But Rahmon tried hard to impress the Russian president with more creepy details of the winter catastrophe in Tajikistan, adding that Dushanbe receives 8 hours of electricity a day, 90% of the industry had stalled and the overall damage inflicted by the abnormal winter exceeds $1 billion.

This time Rahmon was not very effusive about his "strategic partnership" with Russia. Just a month ago, while launching the first unit of Sangtuda-1 hydroelectric power station, he had amazed observers with his overenthusiastic remark: "This is friendship. This is cooperation! This is the first obvious and clear example of joint implementation of a project by the great states of Russia and Tajikistan in the field of hydro-energy in the former Soviet Union after 15 or 16 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is strategic partnership! This is an alliance!"

Yesterday he needed just some money to cope with the devastating winter consequences, and Putin’s assurance that 800 thousand job opportunities in Russia would be kept aside exclusively for the Tajik unemployed mass.

Given the Russian Federal Migration Service’s January announcement about its plan to reduce the quota for labour migrants, the outgoing President’s assurance would hardly secure all those job opportunities for Tajiks. It is expected that the overall quota for labour migrants in Russia soon will be reduced from current six million to two million. Perhaps the very announcement was Rahmon’s matter of concern.

The plan if implemented will affect Tajikistan’s wellbeing drastically. According to the Economist data, "Tajikistan is the fourth biggest recipient of remittances per capita, accounting for 37 percent of its GDP in 2006. Rahmon is well aware of the catastrophic consequences of the cut in Tajik immigration quota in Russia, or more precisely put, his reign largely rests on the very Tajik labour migrants' shoulders and their remittances.