Moscow saw its worst race-related violence in years when thousands stormed a suburban shopping mall to protest an ethnically-charged murder

The violence broke out after Russian nationalists called for a people’s meeting to protest the murder of 25-year-old Egor Shcherbakov. Shcherbakov had been returning home with his girlfriend when he got into an altercation with a man from Russia’s troubled, mostly Muslim provinces in the North Caucasus. The man argued with Shcherbakov about his girlfriend, stabbed him with a knife, and ran away. Police said that the suspect is a shawarma vendor and not a Russian citizen. Ethnic tensions have been an increasing headache for Russian authorities in recent years. Russia has the world’s second-highest number of immigrants after the United States, according to the U.N., consisting predominantly of Muslims from its Caucasus provinces and the impoverished former Soviet republics of Central Asia, which have visa-free regimes with Russia.