Obama to visit Russia, where minorities live in fear

By James Kilner

MOSCOW (Reuters) - When U.S. President Barack Obama flies into Russia on Monday for talks at the Kremlin, he will be visiting a country where anti-migrant sentiment means blacks and other minorities must live low-profile lives to avoid danger.

The advice to new African students in Moscow is simple.

"Don't travel on the metro at night, avoid all travel on the metro during football matches and only go to nightclubs in groups," said Barry Abdoulaye, the former head of the main African student union in the Russian capital.

The streets of Moscow are filled with white, ethnic Russian faces, with a smattering of darker-skinned people from ex-Soviet states in Central Asia and the Caucasus who mainly cook, clean and work on building sites.

Blacks are rare and stand out from the crowd.

Many of the Russian capital's black population are students at the University of Peoples' Friendship in a leafy suburb in southwest Moscow. There they can earn a well-regarded degree at a fraction of the price of a Western European university.

Ka Ndiaga, a computer engineering student from Senegal, sat and watched a group of Africans playing football. He said he was too nervous to venture far from the university campus.

"I've lived here for four years but only know the suburbs. I don't know any other streets," he said.