A Russian conscript reportedly slaughtered his comrades after going on the rampage and shooting at least two dead and wounding five others. The alleged incident reportedly happened at a military barracks in the Naro-Fominsk district of the Moscow region. According to reports, one of the soldiers who was wounded is “seriously injured” in hospital. One of the wounded soldiers reportedly managed to call his mother and tell her about the shooting. She would have then called an ambulance and police to the unit.
This is reportedly what sounded the alert over the incident. The Russian defence ministry has not yet commented on the attack. This incident would not be the first time the Russian military has been reported to be turning on its own ranks. In the first few months of the war, a Kremlin Tiger military vehicle attacked troops running away from the front line, with the crew reportedly shooting their deserting comrades in cold blood.
Conscript bullying is reported to be rife in the Russian army. In April, Putin called up 160,000 men aged 18-30, in Russia’s biggest conscription drive since 2011, as the country moves to expand the size of its military.
The Kremlin claims conscripts are not sent to the war in Ukraine, however, many – after cursory training – are deployed in areas of Russia bordering Ukraine where draftees have been killed and maimed.
The circumstances of the incident at the military unit near Moscow have not been disclosed so far and Naro-Fominsk is home to many military units.
President Donald Trump is set to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for talks at the White House today (Friday), with the US leader signaling he’s not ready to agree to sell Kyiv a long-range missile system that the Ukrainians say they desperately need.
Zelensky gets his one-on-one with Trump a day after the US president and Putin held a lengthy phone call to discuss the conflict.
In recent days, Trump had shown openness to selling long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, even as Putin warned that such a move would further strain the US-Russian relationship.
But following Thursday’s call with Putin, Trump appeared to downplay the prospects of Ukraine getting the missiles, which have a range of about 995 miles (1,600 kilometres.)
“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Trump said. “We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean we can’t deplete our country.”
