Moscow –
Russian security forces reportedly killed a heavily armed gunman who broke into a house on the outskirts of Moscow on Saturday and threatened to march on the Kremlin.
The attackers were discovered by security after breaking into an empty house in an exclusive villa village in the Istria region, about 45 kilometers (less than 30 miles) west of Moscow. Russian media said the man held them at gunpoint but managed to escape.
For several hours, authorities negotiated with the attacker, who was wearing battle fatigue and carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. The man claimed to have come from the Ukrainian front and was driven by God to march through the Kremlin, the seat of the Moscow government.
The Russian National Guard said the man refused to surrender, opened fire on special forces and died when they stormed his house. The attacker was reportedly carrying multiple automatic weapons and hand grenades.
Russian lawmaker Alexander Hinstein has identified the perpetrator as 35-year-old Vyacheslav Chernenko from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. It was not immediately clear whether he really fought in Ukraine as he claimed.
Istra administrator Tatiana Vitusheva said the attacker was mentally unstable.
Some Russian media claimed that the villa he once invaded belonged to former Moscow-friendly Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who was forced out of office by mass protests and whom Russia provided protection for. It was put up for sale by its current owner, who was overseas at the time of the incident.
The incident received media attention. Almost a month after Chief of Mercenaries Evgeny Prigozhin launched a brief rebellion, Wagner’s forces captured the military headquarters in southern Rostov-on-Don and then drove nearly 200 kilometers (125 mi) to Moscow to expel the country’s military leaders.
Prigozhin agreed to end the June 23-24 rebellion under a pact granting amnesty to him and his mercenaries and allowing them to emigrate to Belarus.
