The facts took place on Tuesday, April 26, in a nursery school in the Ulyanovsk oblast, in western Russia. A man opened fire, killing two children and a teacher before committing suicide, Dmitri Kamal, spokesperson for the regional authorities, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
He said the children had likely “between 3 and 6 years old”, adding that the investigators were on the spot. According to Russian news agencies, citing law enforcement, “the reason for the shooting could be a family dispute”.
Sergei Morozov, deputy and former governor of the region, for his part told the RIA Novosti news agency that a young teacher and two children, born in 2016 and 2018, had been killed. Telegram channel Baza, known for its ties to security forces, reported that the man entered the school at siesta time armed with a shotgun.
Shootings that tend to multiply
Fatal shootings, especially in schools, have tended to become more numerous in Russia in recent years, to the point that the President, Vladimir Putin, is alarmed, seeing in it a phenomenon imported from the United States and a perverse effect of the globalization, which led him to toughen the legislation on the carrying of arms.
In September 2021, 18-year-old student opened fire with a shotgun at Perm Universityin the Urals, killing six and injuring thirty.
In May 2021, a 19-year-old shot at his old school, killing seven students and two teachers. The deadliest shooting dates back to October 2018, when a high school student killed nineteen people before killing himself in a high school in Kerch, in the annexed peninsula of Crimea.