According to the Russian National Guard, security forces have killed a heavily armed gunman who broke into a private house in a Moscow suburb and shot at them
July 22, 2023 1:30 p.m. ET
• 2 min reading
MOSCOW – Russian security forces on Saturday killed a heavily armed gunman who broke into a private home in a Moscow suburb, shot at it and reportedly threatened to march towards the Kremlin.
The attacker was spotted by guards after breaking into an unoccupied house in an elite farming village in the Istria region, some 45 kilometers (less than 30 miles) west of Moscow. When two guards and a policeman entered the house, the man held them at gunpoint, but the three later managed to escape, according to Russian media.
For several hours, authorities negotiated with the attacker, who was dressed in combat fatigues and carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. The man claimed he came from the front lines in Ukraine and was urged by God to march to the Kremlin, the seat of government in Moscow.
He refused to surrender, shot at special forces and was killed when they stormed the house, the Russian National Guard said. The attacker was said to have had several automatic weapons and hand grenades.
Russian lawmaker Alexander Chinshtein identified the attacker as Vyacheslav Chernenko, a 35-year-old resident of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. It was not immediately clear whether he had actually fought in Ukraine as claimed.
Istria’s administrator Tatiana Vitusheva described the attacker as mentally unstable.
Some Russian media claimed that the shack he broke into once belonged to Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s former pro-Moscow president who was ousted from office by mass protests and offered sanctuary by Russia. It was put up for sale by its current owner, who was abroad at the time of the incident.
The standoff attracted widespread media attention and came nearly a month after mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin began a short-lived mutiny in which his Wagner forces captured military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and then advanced as much as 200 kilometers (125 miles) to Moscow to overthrow the country’s top military leaders.
Prigozhin agreed to end the June 23–24 uprising under a deal that gave him and his mercenaries amnesty and allowed them to move to Belarus.