On the night of February 24, in the village of Chernomorskoye, annexed Crimea, people in military uniform opened fire and beat up visitors to the Fortress cafe. Video from surveillance cameras was published by the telegram channel “ChP Simferopol”.
It is alleged that the attackers were military personnel 81st Volunteer Brigade «Bears».
In the video, several men in civilian clothes and at least three people in bulletproof vests, masks and with weapons in their hands enter the veranda of the cafe shouting “Everyone on the floor!”, “Are you bitches, fags, crazy here?” All?» and “Hands on your head!” At the same time, they beat visitors with batons and kicks; one of the military men shoots in the air.
Some of the men enter the building — what is happening inside is not visible on the recording. Those remaining on the veranda continue to beat the people lying on the floor. “You stood with him, bitch, fucking shit, you stood with him! Fucking fagot!” one of the attackers says to a young man sitting on a chair in the corner. At the end of the video, the man shouts: “In short, let’s all go out into the street and line up, damn it!”, after which the visitors file out of the cafe.
The girlfriend of the cafe visitor who was sitting on the chair told Important Stories that he was hospitalized in serious condition. According to her, he was diagnosed with a fracture of the bridge of the nose, facial bone, closed head injury and numerous bruises.
“The instigators of the conflict were two bald men who beat my young man with batons. These are two military men who celebrated February 23rd. They went out into the street and arrived somewhat overexcited, they didn’t like something, and they decided to call for reinforcements — this is our PMC “Bears”. There were about ten of them, if you look at all the cameras,” the girl explained.
The Crimean woman added in a conversation with Mediazona that the servicemen beat one girl and the brother of her boyfriend, who tried to stop the conflict. In total, according to her information, 12 people were injured. According to the interlocutor of “Important Stories” and “Mediazona”, servicemen from the “Bears” brigade asked her to remove the video of the attack from social networks in order to “hush up the matter.”
She told the “Agency” that the police accepted statements from seven people: “The police accepted our documents, but they actively tried to hush up this case, negotiate, scare, and so on.” The girl emphasized that the military had already attacked visitors to the Fortress cafe on December 26, 2023, but did not provide details.
Adviser to the Russian-appointed head of Crimea Oleg Kryuchkov wrote that “all those guilty must be punished according to the law.”
«ChE Simferopol» writes without specifying sources that after the attack a criminal case was opened. The same was reported by pro-government blogger and author of the telegram channel “Crimean SMERSH” Alexander Talipov. The Investigative Committee's department for the annexed peninsula did not comment on the initiation of the case.
Also, “ChE Simferopol” published an explanation from the volunteer brigade, from which it follows that the military came to the cafe after the words of their colleagues that they were shouting “Glory to Ukraine” in the cafe. Crimean telegram channels showed a photo allegedly of one of the attackers whose face was smashed. The photo is captioned: “One of the hooligans in the bar in Chernomorskoe apparently realized everything.”