Russian deserter threatens to blow himself up with a hand grenade

A Russian deserter (left) was being escorted to a psychological assessment as part of an upcoming trial when he escaped and sided with a grenade

A Russian deserter in Wednesday threatened to blow himself up with a hand grenade in a desperate bid to clear the charges, but was dissuaded by the region's governor.

Traffic came to a halt on a motorway in the central Russian city of Ufa as a soldier threatened to detonate a grenade in a tense standoff.

Local media outlet Prufy quoted an unnamed resident as seeing a man «at a gas station holding a grenade in his hand and threatening to blow everyone up.»

Russian media identified him as Ildar, 39, who was sent to fight in Ukraine but reportedly fled his base in the Rostov region near the border before being caught and accused of leaving his post.

The base reported that the soldier was being escorted for a psychological examination as part of the upcoming trial, when he escaped and stood up with a grenade.

The crisis was resolved after the man demanded a meeting with Radium. Khabirov, the governor of the Bashkortostan region, who first spoke with him on the phone, and then appeared on the highway.

The governor of Bashkortostan (left) is talking to a soldier named 39-year-old Ildar at the highway

In an unusual video, Mr. Khabirov in a T-shirt polo stands a few meters from the motorway. a man is on the road and calls out to him.

“I care about your life because you are in trouble. I want to help you,” he said.

The soldier replied: “If I put down a grenade, will my trouble go away?”

Mr. Khabirov then approached the former soldier and shook his hand before the two of them sat down on the motorway railing.

The Russian National Guard later released a photograph showing a grenade with a detonator lying on the ground. deleted.

In a statement later Wednesday, the governor said: “It's hard there [in Ukraine]… He made a mistake and broke the law by running away from a military base. I definitely feel sorry for him.»

A photograph published by the Russian Guard shows a grenade lying on the ground with the detonator removed

Khabirov promised to help the former soldier, but added that “it would be wrong if everyone walked around with grenades.”

< p>This was the last in a long a string of incidents in which demobilized soldiers returned home from the front lines in Ukraine only to commit acts of violence.

The governor of Bashkortostan was previously known as an authoritarian leader with little tolerance for dissent in his region.

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In one of last year's most high-profile political trials, Lilya Chanysheva, the former head of the local branch of Alexei Navalny's opposition movement in Ufa, the regional capital, was jailed for seven to a year and a half because of her early political activism. this year.

Mr Navalny, her former boss, said Mr Khabirov had a personal grudge against Ms Chanysheva and called on the police to file charges against her.

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Mr. Khabirov did not comment on the case of Mr. Chanysheva.