Four Men Beat Student in Novosibirsk, Attack Caught on Video

In Novosibirsk, a case of a beating on Vokzalnaya Magistral has reached court. On the night of June 5, a conflict between two groups escalated into a brutal assault in less than a minute, costing one participant his job, health, and prospects. Following the incident, police opened a criminal case for inflicting grievous bodily harm by a group, but only three out of four attackers were charged. Later, the case began to undergo mysterious changes. NGS spoke with the injured student and one of his assailants.

‘Received blows to the head, face, back of the head’

Around 1 a.m. on June 5, Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University student Yan Filimonov, along with his girlfriend, decided to walk a friend home. The group, the young man admitted, was a bit tipsy, but just slightly: they had a couple of shots and were heading home. They never made it to the address: near the business center at Vokzalnaya Magistral, 16, a sturdy young man approached the trio, and almost immediately, three more of his friends joined. According to Yan Filimonov, the stranger was aggressive from the start and immediately started picking a fight.

“One of them took my friend aside and hit him. I pulled the attacker away, and the moment I let go, I received a blow to the head from two other approaching [men from the same group]. During the fight, I repeatedly received blows to the head, face, and back of the head. From one of the last blows, I lost consciousness and fell,” the victim said.

Yan had to reconstruct the subsequent events from the accounts of his girlfriend and friend—both are now witnesses in the case. The incident on the night street was also captured by a surveillance camera, the recording of which Yan Filimonov provided to NGS.

On it, it is visible that from the first word spoken by the stranger to the start of the mass brawl, less than a minute passed, and indeed, the first to lay hands on an opponent was the unfamiliar sturdy man, who pushed Yan’s friend. He responded, and after that, the scuffle could no longer be stopped.

Even when the tall guy in black clothes (that is Yan Filimonov) fell to the ground, the fight did not stop immediately. The student came to only in the hospital, on June 8.

“I spent three days in intensive care, and in total, I was in the hospital from June 5 to June 29. I was diagnosed with two closed craniocerebral injuries in the parietal and temporal areas, brain edema, and hemorrhage,” he said. “ [At the scene of the attack] I had an epileptic seizure. The likelihood that epilepsy will remain with me forever persists.”

He has already felt the consequences of the fight: memory problems, weakness, and insomnia have appeared (he provided medical documents to the NGS editorial office). Besides studying at the university (Yan was training to be an English teacher), he worked as a senior waiter in a hotel. The job paid well: a salary of 80,000 rubles a month (approximately $890 at current rates), with tips bringing in about the same. After the injury, he could no longer cope with the work, had to leave the hotel, and his income dropped practically tenfold.

The police also considered the injuries that the student received on the night street to be extremely serious. As follows from the documents provided by the young man, a criminal case was initiated under Part 3 of Article 111 of the Russian Criminal Code: for inflicting grievous bodily harm. The police worked swiftly, and already on June 6, three of the four attackers were detained.

“[Initially] all of them testified that they beat me purposefully, as a group. All were under a written pledge not to leave,” said Yan Filimonov. “After the results of the forensic medical examination became known on December 23, 2025, the investigation removed the group aspect. One [of the accused] is still charged under Part 3 of Article 111 of the Russian Criminal Code, the second had the charge changed to Part 1 of Article 118 (infliction of grievous bodily harm through negligence. — Ed.), and the main instigator was removed from the criminal case, and now he is accused under the administrative article 6.1.1: battery.” The fourth person wasn’t even sought.”

In January 2026, the prosecutor’s office reviewed the materials and sent the case to the Zheleznodorozhny District Court. Yan hopes that in the end, the verdict will be fair, he is confident that all four of his offenders should answer for a grave crime, not an administrative offense.

“We are all willing to reconcile, but he doesn’t want to”

NGS attempted to contact the accused in the criminal case, as well as the guy who started the conversation with Yan and his friends, but it proved difficult.

According to the investigation, the intentional infliction of crippling blows was done by 23-year-old Novosibirsk resident Vakhtang B., unintentionally by 21-year-old Arthur S., and battery is imputed to 23-year-old Valery Kh. Finding the digital traces of the fourth, most mysterious attacker, whom friends called Spartak during interrogations, took about half an hour. However, we cannot assert that he participated in the mass brawl on June 5.

To the number of Vakhtang B., a male voice answered that he was not available and asked to call back in an hour or two, after which calls were no longer answered. Arthur S.’s number was busy for a long time, and then a male voice said that he was not Arthur. But Valery Kh. (involved in the criminal case as a witness) picked up and agreed to tell his version of the events on the night of June 5.

“We came out of a bar, guys were passing by and asked the guys where else they could go, because the bar was already closing. And they started using obscene language, saying: ‘What, is there a problem?’ They swore, mentioning nationality,” said Valery. “I pushed one, they both rushed at me. He [the interlocutor], probably thought I was alone, but I was with brothers.”

Valery categorically stated that no one intended to beat a random passerby so seriously, and indeed, his group had no plans to continue the evening with a fight—they are serious and family-oriented people. He himself, Valery assured, did not inflict any serious blows on any of the opponents: he hit first, but with the palm of his hand.

In response to the question of whether he is satisfied with how the case is proceeding, the man concernedly reported that, despite their intensive efforts to make amends, the victim does not want to reconcile.

“Something needs to be done, something needs to be decided. We, you see, are all willing to reconcile, paid for the man’s teeth, for the hospital, for medicine, all that. Everyone apologized. Even ready to pay him while he can’t work. But he doesn’t want to reconcile,” lamented Valery.

How much money exactly was paid to the victim, he found it difficult to say, saying, parents helped. The victim answered the question more definitively.

“In October or November, they covered the cost of medicine and the hospital, after that there were no payments. Now I am restoring [the knocked-out] teeth, that will cost me 210,000 rubles (approximately $2,330 at current rates). [For] MRI, medicine, and other things after November, they haven’t paid me,” said Yan Filimonov. “The conversation was with their lawyer, it boiled down to [the accused] being poor guys and having nothing to pay with.”

NGS sent inquiries to the police and prosecutor’s office to find out what guided the investigators when changing the charges in the case, but at the time of publication, no response had been received.

Mass brawls in Novosibirsk are not uncommon. Right on New Year’s Eve, a group of guys started a brawl right near a bar in the center of Novosibirsk, and a few days later, a group of teenagers attacked visitors of a ‘nalivaika’ (a cheap drinking establishment) at ‘Zolotaya Niva’.