A Russian man has shot the leader of the local military draft committee in a Siberian town after telling him he would refuse to fight in the war in Ukraine.
The incident took place in the city of Ust-Ilimsk, a town of about 85,000 people in the Irkutsk region in Siberia.
Video showed the gunman, dressed in camouflage, firing at the official from point blank range as other potential draftees for the Russian invasion fled the room. Reports say that at least three shots were fired.
There are conflicting reports about whether the commandant, who also heads the local draft board, has died. Video showed him being carried from the building and placed on to a stretcher. He was not moving in the video.
The Irkutsk regional governor, Igor Kobzev, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that the draft office head was in hospital in a critical condition, and that the detained shooter “will absolutely be punished”.
According to a witness, the man shot the military commandant after he had given a “clumsy” pep talk for the men to go and fight in Ukraine. “Nobody is going to go anywhere,” the man said moments before opening fire, a witness told the Baikal People news outlet.
It is the latest incident tied to Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a partial mobilisation that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Russian men receiving their call-up papers.
A half-dozen draft centres have been torched in arson attacks in the last week, and police made hundreds of arrests across the country in order to disperse local protests sparked by the announcement.
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