Kyrgyzstan has advised its citizens to refrain from traveling to Russia in the face of rising scrutiny of Central Asians in the country following the deadly Crocus City Hall attack near Moscow in late March.
The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry issued the travel advisory on May 2, warning Kyrgyz citizens of intensified checks and controls at borders by Russian authorities.
The advisory comes as human rights watchdogs report rising levels of xenophobia against Central Asians in Russia following the terrorist attack on the concert venue, which left 144 people dead and hundreds more injured. Eleven Tajik men and a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the attack.
The Tajik president's website said on May 3 that the Central Asian nation's leader, Emomali Rahmon, held phone talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed, among other things, "issues of cooperation in the field of labor migration."
"The heads of the two states also emphasized the close coordination of law enforcement structures and special services in the fight against terrorism, extremism and transnational organized crime, [as well as] the importance of further strengthening of their cooperation," the presidential website said.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said in its statement about the phone talks that the two leaders "expressed hope that recent intensified attempts by certain forces to artificially escalate the situation around work migrants coming to Russia -- including Tajikistan -- be jointly suppressed and will not be able to damage the time-tested brotherly ties between the two nations' peoples."
Earlier this week, the Tajik Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador to Dushanbe and handed him a note of protest against the "unfair" treatment of Tajik nationals in Russia since the deadly incident.
Last weekend, the Tajik Foreign Ministry said hundreds of Tajik citizens trying to enter Russia had been stranded in several Moscow airports, including the Vnukovo airport, where, according to the ministry, almost 1,000 Tajik nationals, including students attending Moscow universities, had been held "without proper sanitary conditions."
According to the ministry, the situation was caused by tightened passport and custom controls in the wake of the March 22 attack.
Russian investigators say the assault -- Russia's worst terrorist attack in two decades -- was carried out by four men, all Tajik nationals. The other detainees are being held for aiding and abetting the attackers.
An offshoot of the Islamic State extremist group, the Islamic State-Khorasan group active in Afghanistan and Central Asia, claimed responsibility for the attack. Tajikistan has also detained nine people suspected of having links to the attack.
Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on April 29 that the measures to prevent terrorism that had been tightened in recent weeks do not target citizens of certain nations.