Moscow police grabbed dozens of teenagers off the street last Friday, then used stun guns on them in custody

Late in the evening of July 3, riot police carried out a sweep near Kitay-gorod in central Moscow. Officers brutally detained teenagers who were out on the streets, including minors. On social media, many of those affected described beatings and humiliation at the hands of riot police. According to those detained, officers used stun guns on them. Several dozen people were taken to a police station, where they were held for several hours. The young people say police recorded their personal information and photographed them but did not file any formal reports.

The independent journalism cooperative Bereg spoke with one of those detained and with a Moscow woman who witnessed the sweep. Meduza publishes their accounts in full.

Warning: This text contains adult language. The names of those involved have been changed.

Georgy

It was around nine-thirty in the evening. I was walking with a friend past Gorka Park near Kitay-gorod.

Someone struck me from behind on the neck without warning. They knocked me to my knees, grabbed my arms, punched me in the face, and hit my leg. The strange thing is that I look fairly athletic — I don’t really look alt, aside from long hair.

Once I was in the police van, I could see that the people being detained were more or less typical Moscow Gen Z kids. A lot of people wear long hair these days, but most of them were closer to normies than to the alt crowd.

Behind me in the van, there was screaming the whole time. They were tearing into one guy — he seemed queer, kind of femme. He told the OMON guys: “This is total bullshit, I’ve memorized your badge numbers!” They responded by taking his phone, finding a wallpaper on it with the Roskomnadzor logo, and screaming that it was a swastika. They told the other detainees: “Go ahead and beat him, or you’ll get the stun gun yourselves.” That’s how out-of-control it was.

Two of the detainees beat that man. He came out of the van with his face all messed up. At the police station, officers tried to talk him out of going public — they were clearly scared, because the physical injuries would have been easy to document.

At some point I heard someone behind me start gasping for breath, while another detainee tried to help and politely asked the officers: “Find an inhaler, he’s having an attack.” They refused until the person started outright screaming — while gasping for air — and the guys next to him started panicking because of it. So why couldn’t they just hand it over right away?

Another man had a panic attack. The officers started trying to talk the crowd into shoving him toward the front of the van so they could hit him with the stun gun — to stop the panic attack. I only heard this; it was nearly impossible to turn around in the crush.

While the van was moving, people grabbed the bars to keep from falling and were threatened with a baton across the hands. I felt the stun gun shocks through the crowd — literally through several people. The crowd would start getting rowdy, then a stun gun shock — and complete silence.

I later talked to guys from the other vans — they said they got knocked around a little, but their van was pretty quiet. By my estimate, my van held 20–30 people. And this wasn’t only happening at Kitay-gorod. As the bus drove on, it stopped to pick up more people.

They took us to the police station at 33 Novaya Basmannaya Street. At first we had no idea where we were — our personal belongings had been taken before we were put in the van, and everyone’s phones had been confiscated. Before they let us out onto the street, we stood crammed together in the narrow, stuffy van with no idea what was going on.

When they finally let us out into the yard in front of the precinct, there were about 100 of us from several vans. Officers asked everyone to split into two lines — adults and minors. About two-thirds were minors. There wasn’t much physical brutality at that point; some only got taunted, nothing physical.

We stood outside for about an hour. Then someone shouted: “Run!” [into the station] — and officers kicked people to speed them up.

The main message was: “What the fuck are you all doing hanging around Kitay-gorod?” When parents arrived at the precinct to collect the minors, I heard officers tell them four separate times: “Why do you go to Kitay-gorod? It’s a sketchy place.” It was absurd.

While we were riding, I tried to calm everyone down and told them: “If they give you anything to sign — don’t sign it.” I know about raids where they try to get you to sign a contract. I don’t know whether anyone was pressured into it. My impression was that they simply called people in one by one, recorded their passport details, and photographed them. No one even had a report filed against them. The cops at the station were basically normal.

But the OMON officers who detained us seemed out of their minds. Maybe their bosses are weird and gave the order. Picture this: a vehicle is driving through the center of the city and one of the officers leans out the window and shouts: “Hey, faggot, come here!” Then gets out and grabs him.

They chased me down to detain me too — as if they needed to round up and intimidate a certain number of people. It was a Friday evening — some people were hanging out, some were taking photos, some were just chilling. The order seemed to be: don’t wander around the center, because of “the situation right now,” as one OMON officer put it — the war, Bereg notes.

I heard from the officers that the sweep was supposedly triggered by the attempted rape, or rape, of some young girl near Kitay-gorod earlier that evening. But that’s a fake cover story — I don’t believe it for a second. They were really only grabbing the alt kids, the stylish ones. Are they the only ones who rape people?

Milena

It was a Friday evening, around eight o’clock. I was walking to a restaurant through Kitay-gorod. I turned into Bolshoy Spasoglinishchevsky Lane and found three police vans parked in that fairly narrow spot — along with a very large number of OMON officers, all in uniform, black masks, and body armor.

I noticed a young man being led into a van and figured maybe there’d been a fight and the police had been called.

Then I turned my head and saw two OMON officers walking nearby. They approached another passerby, grabbed him, and twisted his arms behind his back. He didn’t resist at all — and they started beating him.

I asked what was going on. They told me to buzz off: “Get out of here, move along.” They said it was supposedly a document check. Why that would require taking someone to a police van, I don’t know.

I moved further away and warned other people not to go in that direction. They were grabbing mostly really young people — basically kids — practically children, around 14–17 years old. There were very few adults among those detained.

Right in front of me, one young man tried to break free from the OMON officers, started running, and screamed for help. It was awful to see. He tried to run into a nearby restaurant, but they caught him, knocked him hard to the ground, and dragged him to the vehicle.

I can’t figure out any reason this had to happen — grabbing these guys, and especially children, many of whom were with girls. Maybe they were just being aggressive. Or practicing rounding people up.