On June 24, 2025, the day after the incident at the Moscow airport, messages about the ethnicity of its participants circulated on Telegram channels. We have verified the accuracy of such publications.
On the evening of June 23, in the arrivals area of Sheremetyevo Airport, a man grabbed a two-year-old child who was nearby and forcefully threw him to the floor. The attacker was immediately detained by eyewitnesses, and the child was hospitalized in extremely serious condition. The next morning, information about what happened began to spread in the media and Telegram channels, and the latter accompanied their posts with a video recording of the incident. Some channels (eg. Baza) wrote that the attacker was a citizen of Belarus Vladimir V. and he flew to Moscow from Kabul, as did the family of the injured boy. Others (in particular Mash) claimed that the detainee arrived from Cairo.
However, soon other information began to spread through Telegram channels - the boy allegedly fled Iran to escape the war with Israel. “Shahim, the father of little Yazdan, whose life doctors are now fighting for, said that the child flew to Moscow with his mother. The baby has already survived the war and a difficult road: when the fighting began, they first went to Afghanistan to get to Russia from there,” the Telegram channel reported.Flow"(288,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). Similar posts were published by "Moskvach • Moscow news" (678,000), "Ivan Utenkov | News"(152,000), "Moscow • news • Moskvik» (106,000), etc. Some with a link to the Telegram channel ParsToday Russian, belonging to the Russian service of the State Television and Radio of Iran, clarified that the attacker was a Jew.
The ParsToday Russian channel published its post on June 25 at 13:53 Moscow time. Initially it said: “A Belarusian (Jewish) traveler at the Moscow airport attacked an Iranian child from a family of Iranian travelers and severely beat him. The child is in a coma with severe injuries.” After about two and a half hours, the Iranian travelers were replaced by Afghan ones in the publication, and the following paragraph also appeared: “Earlier in the news it was reported that the child is a citizen of Iran, but the Iranian ambassador in Moscow in today’s interview denied the Iranian citizenship of the victim.”
Indeed, when the information that the injured child was Iranian spread across Russian-language social networks, and from there it got into Iranian And international media, Tasnim agency asked the Iranian Ambassador to the Russian Federation for comment. An interview with him was published on the website Tasnim and in the Telegram channel diplomatic missions. Ambassador Kazem Jalali said that after the rumors appeared, diplomats immediately contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry for clarification, but as a result of the investigation it turned out that the injured child was an Afghan. As for the attacker's origins, he added: "Some have even suggested that this man is Jewish, but I don't know."
In messages Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation The nationality of the attacker was not indicated (it was only specified that he was foreign), but the channel Baza, known for his connections with security forces, wrote in his first publication on the topic that the man is a citizen of Belarus. Soon the media published his name - Vladimir Vitikov. Daily Storm edition reportsthat he was from the Gomel region, worked on the construction of a nuclear power plant in Egypt and was in good standing - he was even appointed as a foreman. Vitikov’s colleagues interviewed by journalists say that they had not previously noticed any strange or aggressive behavior in him, and suggest that he could have been under the influence of drugs at the time of the incident. Edition Msk1.ru, however, writes that, according to the man’s fellow villagers, he has already had nervous breakdowns. “He was, in my opinion, registered in a mental hospital,” one of the interlocutors told reporters. Vitikov’s Israeli citizenship or Jewish roots are not reported in such publications.
As for the injured child, then, according to words Commissioner for Children's Rights in the Moscow Region, Ksenia Mishonova, he (like his entire family) is a Russian citizen of Afghan origin named Yazdan. In addition to him, there is another child in the family and a third is due to be born soon. The confusion probably arose because Yazdan and his mother recently actually went to Iran visit relatives.
The earliest publication that the attacker was an Israeli citizen or a Jew, and his victim was an Iranian, was found by “Verified” in the Telegram channel “Deputy Rokhlin Morozov (Ronin)" The corresponding post was published there on June 24 at 13:00 Moscow time. It said (the author's spelling and punctuation have been preserved): “According to Katya Gordon, the Jew in a yarmulke who broke an Iranian two-year-old boy in Sheremetyevo, an IDF repatriate with an Israeli passport, flying from Israel through Afghanistan to Belarus, comes from the Pale of Settlement of this pus in Belarus.” At the same time, in the account of the lawyer and singer Catherine Gordon Verified did not find any information about this incident. “Deputy Rokhlin Morozov (Ronin),” in turn, publishes exclusively anti-Semitic posts. “Anti-Jewish blog. I am engaged in studying and destroying the alien invasion of the Jews on the planet (in the cell) according to the Testament of Jesus,” says the description of this channel.
Thus, the child injured at Sheremetyevo airport is a citizen of Russia, not Iran. As for the man who attacked him, he is a citizen of Belarus. There is no reliable information that he also has Israeli citizenship or Jewish roots. An anti-Semitic Telegram channel began disseminating information about this.
Cover photo: screenshot from vitra-russia.ru
Read on topic:
- Tel Aviv is on fire, a downed F-35 and a captured pilot. Five fake stories about the war between Israel and Iran
- Is it true that the Israeli military cut off the head of a child from Gaza, placed a camera in its place and sent the body to his father in this form?
- Is it true that the photo shows a child from Syria sleeping between the graves of his parents?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
