Things got really heated on Savik Shuster’s Freedom of Speech talk show on Ukrainian television when a journalist punched a pro-Russian politician in the face and put him in a headlock. All while the show was live on the air. The fight broke out when a lawmaker from the pro-Russia party Opposition Platform-For Life, Nestor Shufrych, refused to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin. At one point in the discussion, journalist Yuriy Butusov walked up to Shufrych and slapped him in the face. A few people in the studio appear to applaud when that happened and then the two then started brawling. Butusov even put Shufrych in a headlock at one point.
The brawl between Butusov and Shufrych lasted around one minute as people around them called on them to stop. They were eventually pulled apart and Shufrych accused Butusov of “scratching like a girl,” according to the Daily Beast.
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and former President Petro Poroshenko were also in the studio. At one point before the brawl broke out Yatsenyuk asked Shufrych whether Putin was a “murderer and a criminal” and the lawmaker only said: “Let Ukraine’s authorities deal with that.” Poroshenko mocked the answer: “There’s a Russian agent right here in the studio.”
