On Monday, a gunman opened fire at a military draft office in Russia’s Irkutsk region, the local governor said.
Ruslan Zinin, 25, has been identified in a video uploaded to social media as the gunman who opened fire on a draft office in the town of Ust-Ilimsk, Siberia. In a separate video of the shooting, he can be seen firing at least one shot.
Igor Kobzev, the regional governor of Irkutsk, said on the Telegram app that the draft office head was in a critical condition and that the detained shooter “will definitely be punished”.
Approximately 115 miles south of Moscow, at a bus station in Ryazan, a man attempted to set himself on fire shouting he didn’t want to fight in Ukraine. An ambulance was called and he was taken to a hospital.
Several draft offices have been attacked since Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a partial mobilization last Wednesday.
In Dagestan and Yakutia, which have supplied disproportionate numbers of soldiers to the war, protests against the draft took place over the weekend.
The rights group OVD-Info reported 101 arrests in Dagestan’s capital Makhachkala on Sunday, a rare display if dissent in the normally tightly controlled region of the North Caucasian.
For more on this story, please consider these sources:
- Russia-Ukraine war latest updates The Washington Post
- Desperate Russian Shoots Recruitment Officer Instead of Signing up to Fight in Ukraine The Daily Beast
- Russian man opens fire at enlistment office, shoots official: reports Business Insider
- Russia: man shoots officer drafting residents for war in Ukraine The Guardian
- Russian Military-Recruitment Centers Attacked Amid Mobilization Pushback The Wall Street Journal