The biggest pogrom in the entire history of Ukrainian football

Ukrainian television channels broadcast shocking footage depicting police special security forces beating up football fans of the Kiev Dynamo squad. Those fans were presumably boys of 14-15 years of age.

The Saturday match between Polesye (Zhitomyr) and Dynamo (Kiev)football teams ended with Dynamo’s victory and a grand pogrom. News programs have already said that the pogrom was the biggest fight in the entire history of Ukrainian football. As the officials said, the soccer fans were very aggressive. They were throwing bottles and breaking benches during the game. The police decided to take all Dynamo fans out from the soccer stadium in order to avoid the consequences that could have happened later outside.

Police officers shoved fans back to one of the entrances and kept them all there for 20 minutes, waiting for reinforcements. One of the Kiev fans said that there were hundreds of people in a very small area that could actually hold about 40 men. One man said that there was the threat of suffocation in such a packed crowd. Fans and police officers started fighting, but when a special police unit arrived, Dynamo’s fans did not have any shots to win the fight. Television cameras were filming the scenes of brutal beatings with batons. One could see that some of the fans were unconscious.

The pogrom continued for about ten minutes. The teenagers did not have an idea where to run and what to do. Those who managed to escape where caught and beaten right in front of the TV cameras. Several Kiev journalists asked police officers not to treat the fans so cruelly. One of policeman said, “Those pigs should be shot!” Anyway, as was reported later, there were only two guys that asked for medical help. Both of them were slightly injured.

Andrey Lubensky PRAVDA.Ru Ukraine

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov