The thing is, the ACF is a frugal and careful organization. We can’t spend the money you donate to us on hotels and resorts. So when we got together for an off-site seminar and team-building event, we simply went hiking instead. With tents, backpacks, a campfire, ticks, porridge cooked in a pot, and long walks.
At this time of year, the only place warm enough is Krasnodar Krai, so we flew to Krasnodar, took a bus from there to Ubinskaya, then hiked across a ridge of the Lesser Caucasus to Pshada with three overnight stops, and from there took a bus to Anapa to fly back to Moscow.
All ACF staff were allowed to bring their spouses and children. I went with my family. Volkov brought his child too.
Last year, my family and I traveled to both Anapa and Gelendzhik without any trouble at all, and it was wonderful. No problems were expected, apart from the routine constant police presence around us that we’re used to.
It now turns out that the authorities decided to use our trip for a demonstrative, public act of violence and intimidation. And I’m sure it wasn’t the Krasnodar authorities specifically. I’ll explain.
It all started at Krasnodar airport, but we chose not to write about it anywhere at the time—we decided not to inflame things.
Exactly the same scenario as in Anapa. As our group gathered at the airport—we arrived on different flights—the police rapidly disappeared from the future “crime scene.” Then sturdy young men blocked off the exit from the terminal so that the only way out was straight into a group of Cossacks.
They stood on the steps with a huge bottle of moonshine, jars of milk, and so on.
“Alexei Anatolyevich, welcome to Kuban soil. Here, have some moonshine. Here, some milk. What, you don’t respect us?”
There was a lot of jostling. They joked, we joked back. You couldn’t get through, but there was no outright physical assault. In the end, we pushed them back and didn’t fall for the provocation; no fight broke out, though at moments it came close. In the entire forecourt of a major city airport in Krasnodar, there was not a single police officer. Even though 40 people were shoving each other around. Of course, all of this is on surveillance cameras. And the “Cossacks” had two camera crews of their own.
It was precisely because of this tactic of ours that later, in Anapa, the thugs acted in a much larger group. There were about 40 of them, and they started the violence right away, without any of this “have some of our milk” nonsense.
So, right after we left the airport, the police stopped us. I now think they were supposed to treat us as the instigators of a fight.
The police themselves didn’t seem to know what to do with us. In the end, they held us for an hour and a half, copied down everyone’s passport details, and let us go.
It’s obvious that organizing something like this both at the airport and on the road would require involvement at least at the level of the regional Interior Ministry.
After that, our entire route was openly monitored by surveillance teams. We’re used to that, so it wasn’t a particular problem. We joked a lot about whether the spies would follow us into the mountains with backpacks.
But jokes aside, in Ubinskaya, at the departure base for the forest, two colonels from the Ministry of Emergency Situations actually came to see us and made us sign a notice demanding that we not hold rallies or fireworks displays in the mountains. I’m not joking.
Then, for the entire route, a group of guys followed us in a UAZ vehicle—maybe game wardens, maybe police, maybe emergency services. In places where driving wasn’t possible, like the mountain pass over the ridge, they went around and met us on the other side. Still, they behaved politely enough. They didn’t come close or bother us.
For three days we had no communication at all—only afterward did I learn about RBC and Khovanskoye Cemetery—and when we came out at Pshada, several cars were already waiting for us. They accompanied us to Anapa, obviously coordinating our arrival time with the “Cossacks.”
And after that, you’ve already seen what happened.
About 35 to 40 people rushed in from different sides. They started by dousing us with milk, then moved on to fighting. Though it’s hard to call it a fight. We were wearing backpacks and had children with us. More than half the group were women.
At one point, someone simply yanked me backward by my backpack. It was large and strapped around my waist—so you just fall flat on your back, that’s all.
That was the “Cossack strategy”: knock people to the ground and beat them. The worst injured was ACF volunteer and TV Rain (an independent Russian broadcaster) host Artyom Torchinsky. He was kicked in the head several times.
When the medics arrived, they first took him to an urgent care clinic, and then he was hospitalized.
All of this went on for quite a while—about 15 minutes—and looked utterly surreal. Broad daylight, the square in front of a major city airport. Full of people. Check-in for a Moscow flight is underway. There are no police at all. A brawl is unfolding. It dies down, then spills over into another clash. People around us stare in disbelief and film it on their phones.
It was a good thing we managed to get the children—ages 6, 8, and 14—out of the crush fairly quickly. They were badly frightened, but unharmed.
These costumed, cowardly thugs kept running off and then charging back in. Even they themselves could hardly believe they were being allowed to do this in broad daylight, in front of everyone, without any concern for the cameras.
Around the tenth minute, two police officers appeared, and the “Cossacks” shoved them around by the collar without any trouble at all. The police didn’t even try to detain anyone.
After a while, the main group of attackers—young men in camouflage—ran off at a brisk trot, followed by the second group—older men in white shirts. Only after that did the transport police arrive, and then the regular police.
That’s why I say the operation was clearly coordinated with the police—from the timing of our arrival to the remarkable disappearance of law enforcement during the attack.
Russia is in a permanent state of “counterterrorism operations,” especially in the south, especially during the holiday season. Just look at how many police and security personnel there are in any airport. But here, they vanished.
As is already clear now from reading Anapa forums, the direct organizer of the attack is a man named N. Nesterenko.
He is a local “Cossack leader,” and at the same time the owner of a food market and a gangster playing the role of Anapa’s own Tsapok (a reference to Sergei Tsapok, the notorious Russian gang leader).
There is a huge amount of material about him:
There’s even a film about him.
Nevertheless, he operates quite freely and, as you can see, is used by the authorities to carry out “delicate assignments.”
It is precisely him whom pro-government forums are now calling “the old Cossack whose being struck started the fight.” Look closely and you’ll see that before being hit himself, this “old Cossack” strikes Stas Volkov from the ACF, who is simply walking along carrying a ball:
But that is only what the attackers themselves foolishly posted online. It was perfectly clear how this “old Cossack” organized his group, directed it, and personally struck people.
By the way, as locals write on the forums, this group of costumed men was also assembled from various places and units—if you can even call them units.
Now I see online that the version saying “they offended some random old man and that’s how it all started” has been dropped as untenable: there are too many videos, and everyone knows this “random old man,” so the story has changed. Now it’s “they were unidentified people.”
Of course, we filed police reports about the attack. Six people received official filing receipts. I assess the chances of an investigation—and even more so of those responsible being held accountable—as zero. How can the police investigate something they themselves took part in?
As for the broader conclusions, everything is clear. There is a very intensive effort underway to raise the level of violence society is expected to accept. The escalation is real. Cakes, eggs, brilliant green antiseptic, caustic liquid. All of it done demonstratively in public places, in broad daylight, on camera. And done with conspicuous impunity even against well-known and respected people such as Ulitskaya.
The police are no longer merely protecting the attackers; they are working with them.
Today we saw a rapid leap to a new level: a demonstrative serious crime committed not just in a public place, but on specially protected premises. A whole bouquet of offenses: from hooliganism and mass disorder to moderate bodily harm and violence against a law enforcement officer. And they are even happily posting the videos themselves—they understand they will be protected, while both the fact of the attack and the fact that there were no consequences will send exactly the intended message to society.
A standard intimidation tactic of authoritarian regimes: using informal but controlled groups to carry out violent actions. Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s.
No elections and no public outcry will be able to affect this anymore—they themselves are seeking public resonance even more than we are, as you can see.
The only answer is to take to the streets. What’s needed is real solidarity in the face of a semi-fascist state.