A man opened fire on Monday at a Russian Army recruitment center in Siberia, seriously wounding a soldier. The event occurred in Ust-Ilimsk, an industrial city 600 km north of Irkutsk, in Siberia.
The governor of the region, Igor Kóbzev, reported on his telegram channel that the injured man is the head of the recruitment office and that after what happened the doctors were trying to save his life.
"A young man fired several shots at the recruiting office. Military Commissar Alexander Vladimirovich Eliseyev is in intensive care in an extremely serious condition," the governor wrote. He added that after what happened the police arrested the assailant.
As seen in a video posted on social media, he identifies himself to police officers as Ruslán Zinin, 25.
A witness to what happened, who had arrived to deliver his documents, told the RBK media outlet that around 11:40 (local time) "the military commissioner took the unit to the assembly room and began to talk about the situation in the country , that he fulfills the will of the State, etc. Then the shooter jumped, approached him and said: 'Now we're all going home' and shot the commissioner. I fell to the ground. After the second shot I ran away " .
"The shooter has been arrested immediately. He will be punished! I can't understand what happened," Governor Kobzev reacted. "I am ashamed that this is happening at a time when, on the contrary, we should be united, not fighting against each other, but against real threats," he added.
In a statement, the Investigation Committee, which is responsible for investigating the most serious crimes in Russia, specified that Zinin is a resident of Ust-Ilimsk. For attempting on the life of a representative of the law he could be sentenced to life in prison.
It is the first time that there has been an attack with firearms against a recruitment center since Russian President Vladimir Putin decreed a partial mobilization of Russian reservists on September 21 to incorporate them into the Ukraine campaign.
Yes, there have been several attacks, most with Molotov cocktails, to burn facilities in various regions of the country. On the night of Sunday to Monday, the police of Uriupinsk, a city in the province of Volgograd (southern European Russia), arrested a resident of the town, Mijaíl Filátov, accused of setting fire to the military police station in protest at the mobilization military, according to the Telegram Baza channel. In a video you can see how the man throws up to five firebombs against the building.
The fires in the recruitment offices began after Putin announced the start of the "special military operation" against Ukraine in February, and were more frequent in May.
After the announcement of the mobilization, the number of cases has increased again. On the night of Saturday, September 24, an unknown person threw a Molotov cocktail out of a window on the first floor of the recruitment center in Kansk, in the Krasnoyarsk region. The fire was extinguished in 20 minutes.
A day earlier, unknown assailants set fire to the centers of Khabarovsk (capital of the homonymous region, in the Russian Far East), Svobodni (Amur province) and the town of Siáskelev (in the Leningrad province).
On September 22, there were similar attacks in Kyra (Zabaikalie), in the city of Lomonosov (under the jurisdiction of St. Petersburg), and Gay (Oreborg province).
The Ust-Ilimsk incident comes amid anti-mobilization protests multiplying in Russia and at a time when many Russians are trying to leave the country to avoid being called up. According to the NGO OVD-Info, the police have arrested more than 2,300 people in the protests against the measure, the majority (1,400) on the same day of the announcement.
