At least 20 masked football hooligans attacked a group of British fans in the Rooster restaurant late on May 24 in central Kyiv, only a few hundred meters from the Olimpisky Stadium at which Liverpool and Real Madrid will meet in the Champions League final on May 26.
The UK daily newspaper the Daily Mirror reported that the sudden attack had happened just a few hours after the Liverpool fans had arrived in Kyiv.
The hooligans stormed the venue with their faces covered with “hoods and skull mask-emblazoned bandanas.” The British fans shielded themselves with chairs and tables inside the restaurant, the newspaper said.
“We were having dinner, completely minding our own business,” Liverpool fan Jason Frost told the Daily Mirror. “They came at us like a pack of dogs. It just kept coming. It was terrifying.”
The gang was also described as throwing pieces of broken glass in the British, inflicting cuts and wounds.
The police arrested two attackers when they arrived at the scene.
Video footage shows one of the attackers handcuffed by law enforcers and wearing a T-shirt with a pseudo-runic inscription reading “Everyone against us, we against everyone” in Russian, and an insignia of the CSKA Kyiv football club, formerly associated with the Soviet-era military. The club folded in 2009.
Besides, the Daily Mirror said, the police also detained and handcuffed a Liverpool fan with an injury to the back of his head as he tried the flee the scene.
Early on May 25, Holosiyivskiy District Police Chief Oleh Voloshyn confirmed that two attackers had been detained. They refused to give any explanations about their motives to commit the assault on the British fans.
The police said that two foreign citizens injured in the incident had been taken to a police station. However, they “flatly refused to file a complaint,” the message reads.
