In the Polish city of Radom, a group of eight men brutally beat three 20-year-old Ukrainians. According to the investigation, the altercation was provoked by 34-year-old Tomasz G., a resident of Lublin, who had come to the city for a wedding and, after the celebration, while intoxicated, began giving the young men a "lecture on Volhynia." The attack took place on August 2 between 5 and 6 a.m. on Malczewskiego Street, but it only became known several days later. The victims sustained head and facial injuries and were examined by forensic experts.
How the events unfolded
According to Cezary Oltarzewski, prosecutor at the Radom District Prosecutor's Office, Tomasz G. struck up a conversation with the Ukrainians about their origins, then called over three or four strangers who were crossing the street and told them that the men in front of them were Ukrainians. "They reacted very spontaneously, and the attack began," the prosecutor stated. During the beating, several more men joined the aggressors, bringing the total number of attackers to eight. The Ukrainians, according to their accounts, were put off by the Pole's behavior, which they claim amounted to an attempt to give them a "lesson" on the Volhynia topic.
Accountability and the course of the investigation
The police managed to identify the main organizer of the brawl. As the prosecutor told Gazeta Wyborcza, after the attack Tomasz G. "called a taxi and left as if nothing had happened." The man was brought to the prosecutor's office, where he admitted his guilt and stated that he had been drunk at the time of the incident. He was placed under police supervision; the offender faces up to five years in prison. Law enforcement officers are continuing to search for the other attackers and are reviewing city surveillance footage.
Contradictory data
Open sources contain discrepancies in how the motive for the incident is described. According to statements from the prosecutor's office and the victims themselves, the trigger for the aggression was the Pole's attempt to give the Ukrainians a "lecture on Volhynia." At the same time, a number of aggregators describe the same episode in Radom as an attack "for refusing to sing Polish songs." Both versions refer to the same incident on August 2 on Malczewskiego Street, however the specific cause of the conflict is interpreted differently in the publications. The official and most detailed version remains the one presented by the Radom District Prosecutor.
Part of a systemic problem
The incident in Radom is not isolated: cases of aggression against Ukrainians in Poland are recorded regularly. Thus, on August 14 in Poznań, police detained a woman who, together with a friend, attacked Ukrainians — two drunk women shouted insults, spat at passersby, and one of them hit a man with an inverted umbrella. On the same day in Bydgoszcz, two adults attacked a 14-year-old Ukrainian girl and her 12-year-old brother simply because the children were speaking Ukrainian. Against the backdrop of these events, the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, publicly addressed the attackers and urged them to turn themselves in to the police by the end of the week.
