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LONDON, September 26 (Portal) – A gunman was arrested after opening fire on a military service office in Russia’s Irkutsk region on Monday, the local governor said.
The gunman, who posed to police officers as 25-year-old Ruslan Zinin in a video posted to social media, opened fire on a military service office in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk. A separate video of the shooting shows him firing at least one shot in the draft office.
Portal could not verify the videos.
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Irkutsk regional governor Igor Kobzev wrote on the Telegram messaging app that the head of the draft office is in critical condition in hospital and that the arrested gunman “will be punished without fail.”
Separately, local media reported that a man tried to set himself on fire at a bus stop in the town of Ryazan, some 185 km (115 miles) southeast of Moscow, while shouting that he did not want to fight in Ukraine. He was taken away in an ambulance.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced partial mobilization to strengthen Russian forces in Ukraine last Wednesday, several military services have been attacked.
Anti-conscription protests took place over the weekend in the Dagestan and Yakutia regions, both of which have contributed disproportionately large numbers of soldiers to the war.
Rights group OVD-Info said at least 101 people were arrested in Dagestan’s capital Makhachkala on Sunday, a rare example of mass dissidents in the normally tightly controlled North Caucasus region.
(This story has been refiled to change the distance conversion in paragraph 5.)
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Portal reporting; Editing by Mark Trevelyan
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