Finding friends in the new city

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Can you give some advice on how can I find friends in the new city?
In fact, city is not that new - I moved back after long time to the city where I spent most of my life (Moscow), but nevertheless I always had very few friends here, and I decided to find some more, at least to try. But... advice from the internet proved to be useless, because:
- I didn't find interesting clubs
- Same with Meetups and their local analogs
- Not religious, so churches are not a solution, and here they are pretty dull anyway, with no real community life like have Catholics or Protestants
- Don't like bars and night clubs
- Volunteering opportunities are very limited, and mostly it's either work with sick kids, or on huge sports activities, neither of which interests me
- I'm not a fan of sports
And there are reasons why I can't now organize one.
What I like - history, social science, macroeconomics, applied psychology, something mystical. Maybe not the most common interests, but definitely not the rarest. I have friends who share my interests, but mostly they are in other countries. What can I do to get some here?

I'm not going to reveal the city here---but is it the same city you were located a year ago?

Yes, I moved back for year or two. And then - to Europe.

That's interesting. Is it a very large city, a cosmopolitan city?

Large, but too homogeneous for its size, if we won't consider some ethnic minorities.

Sounds like some place in eastern, rather than western, Europe.

I would class London, Paris, the German cities (to a certain extent), Rome, and Barcelona as being cosmopolitan.

I would say Budapest is not really a cosmopolitan city. Or Warsaw. Or many places in eastern Europe.

Places like Scandinavia are more cosmopolitan than they used to be---but still not in the class of London, Paris, etc.

And you are right. In the Eastern Europe many cities are not that cosmopolitan; instead, they have some huge socio-cultural majority, and it's hard do deal with it if you don't actually fit into.

Another problem is that people here didn't get used to believe each other, they wait backstab often, so it makes informal contacts much less developed than in western countries. For example, people here may be worried even if you ask them on the street what time is it now.

Not that good combination for social life.

St. Petersburg is supposed to be more cosmopolitan than Moscow.

That was the vision of Peter the Great.

It was, in 18th century Now it's almost like any big city in Russia.