Plasy, Czech Republic: Repugnant, xenophobic assault on two Ukrainian women. Attacker asked if they were from Ukraine, then brutally beat them in front of their children.
Two Ukrainian women who fled to the Czech Republic after Russia's full-fledged invasion of Ukraine last year have become the victims of a brutal, xenophobic assault during a fair in Plasy in the northern Plzeň Region. The man who attacked them first asked if they were from Ukraine and then began to vulgarly abuse them verbally and punch them with his fists.
The younger woman ended up in hospital with fractured facial bones. News server Novinky.cz reported on the assault.
The incident transpired on Sunday, 13 August. Two friends, Lilia (34) and Tetiana (44), were chatting while sitting out on the sidewalk with their children aged 11 and two.
The driver of an older Škoda Octavia hauling a trailer stopped to ask if they were from Ukraine. When they nodded yes, he drove past them, stopped the car, and returned to them on foot.
“First he punched me in the face. Then he began to pull on my hair so I would stand up. Then he turned on Lilia,” Tetiana told news server Novinky.cz.
Tetiana said she did her best to prevent the man from escaping by grabbing his ignition key. However, she was assaulted by two other men who hit her in the back and tore the key from her hand.
The first assailant then got back in his car and drove off. Lilia was left unconscious and bleeding from her facial injuries.
An ambulance and police arrived on the scene and took Lilia to the teaching hospital in Plzeň. According to doctors, she suffered an open fracture of the jaw and a fracture of the cheekbone and nasal bones.
“I recall three punches and then I don’t remember anything. I didn’t come to until I was in the hospital,” Lilia said.
“On 13 August after 20:00 we received a report of a physical attack on a 40-year-old woman in a meadow near Plasy,” Regional Police spokesperson Eva Červenková told the Czech News Agency (ČTK). Police are verifying all the circumstances of the incident.
“They are still investigating,” the spokesperson said. She would not comment on whether the victim was a Ukrainian woman or whether police have already apprehended the assailants.
Klára Kalibová: Number of attacks on Ukrainians has enormously grown since the start of the full-fledged invasion
According to Klára Kalibová, an attorney and director of the In IUSTITIA organization, since the beginning of the full-fledged invasion of Ukraine by Russia there has been an enormous growth in the assaults being committed against Ukrainians in the Czech Republic. “The growth in the number of people who have turned to us because they were attacked for their Ukrainian nationality has been enormous. We had two clients from Ukraine who turned to us before the beginning of the full-fledged invasion. Last year, that number rose to 40,” she told Romea.cz.
“The trend is continuing this year, and the attacks are not just verbal, but also physical. There have also been attacks on property, threats and intimidation,” she said, adding that assaults in the real world are being reported to them slightly more than online ones are.
This trend is confirmed by yet another such attack reported by news server iDNES.cz. Detectives are looking for the perpetrator or perpetrators of a crime with tragic consequences which happened to transpire on the same day as the attack on the two Ukrainian women in Plasy, Sunday, 13 August at around 3:30 AM in Teplice in front of a business called Luna; during a physical scuffle, a Ukrainian man suffered serious injuries and later died of them in hospital.
