Belarusian with British passport beaten by security forces in Russian Yessentuki, where he came for grandmother's funeral

36-year-old British citizen Dmitry Smatrytsky was born in Orsha, but in the early 2000s, he moved to the UK with his mother. He regularly visited his grandmother in Yessentuki, Stavropol Krai, Russia, until his Belarusian passport expired in 2014. In early 2026, the pensioner reported a worsening of her health. Dmitry and his mother obtained Russian visas to visit her, but by the time they arrived, the woman had passed away. And the adventures after that had only just begun, writes Russian "Mediazona".

Arriving in Yessentuki for the funeral, on April 3, around 1 PM, Dmitry was walking along Karl Marx Street in search of a funeral home. At that moment, a car blocked his way, from which a man emerged and demanded to see his documents.

When Smatrytsky asked who they were, the man replied: "We will tell you now who we are." Only after that did those present state that they were from the police, and one of them briefly showed an ID. When Dmitry refused to get into the car, a policeman, whom his colleagues called Khristik, began to hit him in the stomach and head.

Smatrytsky was taken to the city department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. On the fifth floor of the building, two officers threw him to the floor, and Khristik began to hit the man and jump on his head with his feet. He was stripped naked, searched for tattoos on his body, they shouted that he was a "TCC officer" (an employee of the Ukrainian military enlistment office), and one of the policemen declared: "We have a hunt here. Didn't you know?"

The beating stopped only when Dmitry's mother called. The policeman who answered the phone stated that her son had been detained due to a "suspicious appearance." When the woman arrived at the department, they demanded 300 thousand rubles (about 3300 dollars) from her, claiming her son had allegedly "assaulted" officers. She refused to pay. As a result, Smatrytsky was held in a cell for several hours, registered for migration, assigned an administrative fine, and released without being given a copy of the document.

The next day, Dmitry went to the emergency room, where he was diagnosed with fractures of the nose and two ribs, a concussion, and numerous abrasions. On April 13, he filed a statement with the investigative department for the city of Yessentuki. Senior investigator Ebzeev accepted the statement and ordered a forensic medical examination. However, the investigator later reported that the surveillance cameras in the police department allegedly did not work on the day of the detention, and advised Smatrytsky to leave Russia as soon as possible.

Dmitry contacted British diplomats, who helped him arrange his departure, and on April 30, he left the territory of the Russian Federation.

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