Chingiz Kailypov, 23, from Kyrgyzstan is now in coma in a Moscow hospital after suffering a serious head injury from attackers on a commuter train west of Moscow Sunday night.
"Investigators have learned that a group of young men chanting nationalist slogans attacked Kailypov on a commuter train for no particular reason, punching and kicking him, and beating him with a metal chain," prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said they have filed a request for custody for two of the suspects with a court of law.
The suspects are Moscow students 17 to 18 years of age, according to prosecutors. They are facing ethnically motivated violence charges and could be sentenced to several years in prison.
Authorities have been generally reluctant to treat attacks on non-Russians as race-hate crimes, portraying them instead as acts of hooliganism.
Russia has seen a wave of apparently racially motivated attacks on dark-skinned people in recent years, including an explosion at the Cherkizovsky market in northeastern Moscow August 21, which killed 11 people and injured at least 49, mostly Asians.
Many traders in markets across Russia are from former Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus region. Guest workers from post-Soviet republics are also employed in booming construction projects in and around Moscow.
