A Russia-speaking man has verbally and physically abused a Ukrainian family for speaking Ukrainian during a train raid in Switzerland.
A video that has gone viral in social media, shows the man voicing racial slur and insulting a Ukrainian family in a train. The incident took place on a train travelling from the Swiss municipality of Interlaken to the town of Spiez as a Ukrainian family were on their way home.
After hearing Ukrainian, the man began threatening the family, demanding that they stop speaking Ukrainian and leave the train car. The video of the man was captured and shared by Olena Dudnyk who was attacked by the Russian man along with her husband and a one-year-old son.
The video shows the man berating the family, especially, the husband and threatens to kill Ukrainians. “I’m Russian. We will kill you. We will kill you till the end. All of you. Leave this place,” the man can be seen ranting in the video. He then inquired why the Ukrainian family did not speak German and insulted them for relying on government support instead of working and paying taxes. According to Olena Dudnyk, the man provoked a brawl, which forced other passengers call police. The family plans to appeal to the prosecutor’s office over the attack.
The incident raised concerns over hate speech. The spokesperson for the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Heorhiy Tykhyy, described the incident as “horrible,” noting inadmissibility of hate speech and inter-ethnic hatred. Kyiv has appealed to Swiss authorities to probe the incident and bring the culprits to justice. It should be noted that earlier, the Eastern Human Rights Group had issued a recommendation for foreign countries to impose stricter visa controls on Russian citizens who are relocating and traveling en masse to the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
