Russian Jewish Congress President Vyacheslav Kantor said that last week’s rampage at a Moscow synagogue was not a religiously-motivated crime, but was aimed against people of Jewish ethnicity in general.

“It was an anti-Semitic, not anti-Hebrew, action,” Kantor told a news conference at the Interfax central office on Tuesday.

Twenty-year-old Alexander Koptsev, who stabbed several worshippers with a knife, “chose this synagogue out of purely technical considerations. This boy’s choice of the attack venue was no accident,” he said.

Kantor said he does not think that Koptsev was guided by religious considerations.

The congress president disagreed that the synagogue incident may prompt Jews to leave Russia.