A Ukrainian soldier was arrested Thursday morning in Ukraine following killing five people, including four of his comrades, in the center of the country overnight, then fleeing for several hours with his firearm.
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This drama comes at a time when Ukraine accuses Russia, which has massed troops on its borders, of trying to destabilize it from the inside, the first elements of the investigation evoking the trail of hazing.
The shooting took place around 3:40 a.m. (01:40 GMT) when the alleged shooter received his weapon to perform a guard shift at a factory of the Yuzhmash group in the city of Dnipro. This company manufactures space rockets and launchers, but also missiles, vehicles and industrial or agricultural tools.
AFP
“A member of the Ukrainian National Guard fired shots with a Kalashnikov assault rifle at the guards at the factory, then fled with his weapon. As a result, five people were killed and five others injured,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Police say the victims are four other National Guard soldiers and a civilian, a woman.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed, in a message on Facebook, his “sincere condolences” to the families of the victims of this “horrible crime”, calling on the investigators to “analyze in the most detailed way the motivations of the assailant”.
AFP
Several hours following the tragedy, the Minister of the Interior announced the arrest of this 21-year-old young man from the coastal region of Odessa and published a photo of him in uniform and shaved head, lying on the snowy ground.
“Artem Ryabtchouk has just been arrested by police officers in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” Minister Denys Monastyrsky wrote on Facebook. He was arrested in the city of Pidgorodné around 07:30 GMT, said the national police, regarding fifteen kilometers from the scene of the shooting.
A special operation had been launched in Dnipro, a city in the center of the country, and in the surrounding region to find him.
AFP
The Public Bureau of Investigations has announced a ‘negligence’ investigation into National Guard officials, accusing them of improperly securing strategic infrastructure sites and citing ‘hazing’ among the leads of the crime examined by the investigators.
National Guard Commander Mykola Balan said in the evening that he had tendered his resignation.
Shootings in military units in the former USSR are a recurring phenomenon, often due to revenge following hazing, particularly in Russia, although the situation has improved in recent years.
These hazings, sometimes very violent, can also be the cause of suicides.
In February 2018, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed by two other members of the army in the east of the country who explained their gesture by “hazing”.
Also in Ukraine, similar facts may also have concerned veterans of the Eastern Front where the Ukrainian army has been fighting since 2014 once morest Pro-Russian separatists, sponsored by Russia, and who have founded two self-proclaimed republics.
AFP
In August 2021, Ukrainian police arrested a veteran of the same Donbass war, apparently unbalanced, who threatened to detonate a grenade at the entrance to the government headquarters in Kiev.
More generally, armed incidents have become more common in Ukraine, with weapons flowing more freely into the country from the conflict zone. In July 2020, an armed madman took a bus hostage for twelve hours with 13 passengers on board.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a former actor, accepted a bizarre request from the kidnapper to resolve the crisis: he posted a video on Facebook recommending watching a documentary regarding animal abuse.
Ukraine is currently at the heart of a Russian-Western geostrategic crisis, Washington accusing Moscow of wanting to invade its neighbor, while the Russians say they are threatened by NATO’s ambitions on its borders.
