In 2016, Vyacheslav Datsik was detained for breaking into a brothel, attacking the sex workers present, and forcing them to walk naked through the streets of St Petersburg. Two years removed from the incident, which made headlines across the Russian Federation and beyond, a Russian court has sentenced Datsik to three-and-a-half years in a strict penal colony.

Dastsik’s arrest took place shortly after he declared a “war on prostitutes” in May 2016. He broke into a small hotel that also functioned as a brothel and began to record the scene with his camera. Flanked by accomplices, Datsik intimidated 12 sex workers and an alleged client and forced them to follow him to the police station in their “work uniforms.”

Datsik attack on the sex workers was violent and humiliating. He entered each of the private rooms, attacking the sex workers and tearing off blankets they used to protect their identities. He chased one into the bathroom and cornered her in the shower. He punched her repeatedly before stripping her of her clothes and sending her to the rest of her traumatized colleagues in the hallway.

”F***ing whores,” Datsik yelled into the camera during the raid. “They infect the last white men of our nation with HIV. The whole country will watch you, whores. As for the pimps, we will wring their necks. Rusiches! If you know where’s a whorehouse, call the police and tell the police to file them all.”

Once Datsik was detained by police, he was transferred to a pre-trial detention unit to await his sentence. In 2018, he was found guilty of hooliganism, breaking and entering, and a “premeditated attack on the health of others.” It was also established the Datsik had stolen 50,000 rubles from the brothel.

Datsik’s raid on the brothel took place three months after he was released from prison in March 2016. The former MMA fighter was initially detained in 2007 over a series of armed robberies of phone shops in St. Petersburg. Following an examination of his mental health due to his proclamations that he was the son of a Slavic pagan god, it was deemed that Datsik was afflicted with mental illness and was not imprisoned.

Eventually, the former fighter was transferred to a psychiatric clinic, where he escaped in 2010 by tearing a hole in the fence. Datsik fled to Norway, where he illegally crossed the border and handed himself in to the authorities for political asylum. He was eventually jailed again for his relations to neo-Nazism, and was extradited back to Russia in 2011 to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Datsik is best known for his knockout victory over former UFC champion Andrei Arlovski.