A Russian soldier opened fire this Tuesday against his fellow servicemen and civilians in the town of Khmelnytskyi, in the Sevastopol district, on the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, killing at least four people and wounding four others, reported the local governor appointed by Russia, Mikhail Razvozhayev.
“A tragedy in Sevastopol. According to initial reports, a soldier fired at his fellow” soldiers and killed one of them, wounding another, the official wrote on Telegram. The attacker then turned his weapon on civilians, killing two men aged 71 and 59 and a 64-year-old woman, and wounding three others.
Detained, for no known reason
Razvozhayev indicated that the attacker was detained and that the motives for the attack are currently unknown. “All circumstances and causes of the incident are being investigated,” he stated, and asked the public to remain calm and rely only on official information. The governor also expressed his condolences to the victims’ families and assured that the wounded are receiving emergency medical care.
Investigators and forensic experts are already working at the scene to reconstruct what happened
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Mikhail Razvozhayev, governor imposed by Putin in Crimea.
Crimea, under pressure for weeks
The Crimean peninsula, strategic and heavily militarized, was seized by Russia from Ukraine and annexed in 2014. For weeks it has been the target of Ukrainian attacks, within the framework of the large-scale offensive that Russia launched against its neighbor in February 2022.
The episode became known amid a new day of Ukrainian bombardments against Russian territory that left at least seven dead in attacks on e-commerce logistics centers and the border regions of Belgorod and Bryansk.
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In parallel, the Federal Security Service (FSB) reported this Tuesday on the arrest in Sevastopol of two people recruited by Ukrainian military intelligence, from whom drones and explosives were seized, with which they allegedly planned to attack critical infrastructure in the region and a pro-Russian leader on an official visit to the peninsula.
Concern about the risk of violence among former combatants
Since the beginning of the war, Russian authorities and politicians have warned about the possible increase in crime linked to former combatants, many of them recruited in Russian prisons or sent to the front to avoid pending criminal proceedings. This Tuesday’s attack in Sevastopol adds to a series of incidents that revive that concern, although the authorities did not link the episode directly to the battlefront.
