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Officers from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) conduct an operation in Dagestan. FILE PHOTO: AFP
MOSCOW:
A Russian soldier who deserted his army unit killed a resident of a women’s shelter after taking her hostage for over five hours, the shelter’s director told AFP.
The incident took place early Wednesday in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, around 4,000 kilometres east of Moscow, the shelter said.
“This is a great tragedy. In our 20 years of work, we’ve never had anything like this,” the director of the Obereg women’s shelter, Alexander Sobolev, told AFP in an interview. The incident came to light after Sobolev wrote a lengthy post on Telegram criticising what he called the “serious problem” of Russian soldiers acting with impunity after returning from the front line.
“Psychopaths, abusers, murderers, hiding behind their participation in the special military operation, are already regularly committing horrific acts, feeling they can get away with it,” he said in the post, referring to Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine.
The man who perpetrated the attack had deserted his unit after receiving medical treatment and was the husband of another woman living in the shelter, whom he had been violently abusing, Sobolev said.
