The death toll has grown to 15, including 11 children, when a man opened fire at his old school in central Russia on Monday, according to police. The killing was the latest in a string of school shootings that have jolted Russia in recent years, and it occurred while the country was on edge over plans to mobilize tens of thousands of men to fight in Ukraine.
According to the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the attack in the city of Izhevsk an “inhuman terrorist attack” and said that the person who did it “probably belongs to a neo-fascist group.”. When his body was recovered, the attacker was “wearing a black top with Nazi emblems and a balaclava,” according to authorities.
He turned out to be a local man who had graduated from the school in 1988. Investigators say that two security guards and two teachers were killed and that the person who did it “committed suicide.”. Authorities had already said that seven children and six adults had died, but they had not said if the suspected shooter was among them or not.
Investigators claimed they were looking into his “adherence to neo-fascist beliefs and Nazi ideology.”. The region’s governor, Alexander Brechalov, reported “casualties and injuries among youngsters” in a video statement outside Izhevsk school No.88.
Brechalov proclaimed a day of mourning in the region, which will run until Thursday. Izhevsk is the regional capital of Russia’s Udmurt Republic and is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) east of Moscow. It is a city of about 630,000 people. The attack came just hours after a guy opened fire and critically injured a recruitment official at a Siberian enrollment center.
In April, a man opened fire in a kindergarten in the central Ulyanovsk region, killing a teacher and two children. This was the last big school shooting in Russia. The shooter, who was described as “mentally ill,” was later discovered dead, with officials claiming he had shot himself. Mass shootings at schools and universities were rare in Russia until 2021 when two separate killing sprees in the cities of Kazan and Perm in central Russia shocked the country and led politicians to tighten gun laws.
Revisiting Gun Laws
In September 2021, a student wearing black tactical clothing and a helmet and armed with a hunting rifle stormed into Perm State University buildings, murdering six individuals, predominantly women, and injuring two dozen more. The gunman fought against being arrested, so police shot him as he was being caught and taken to a hospital for treatment.
It was the second such incident that year, following the May killing of nine people by a 19-year-old former student at his old school in Kazan. According to investigators, the gunman had a mental handicap yet was considered fit to obtain a license for the semi-automatic shotgun he used. On the day of the incident, Putin called for a review of gun control regulations, raising the age to purchase hunting rifles from 18 to 21 and strengthening medical checks.
Authorities have blamed past school shootings on foreign influence, saying that young Russians have seen such acts in the U.S. and other places on the internet and in the media. Other shootings with a lot of attention have happened in Russia’s army. This has brought the issue of hazing to the forefront in a country where all men between the ages of 18 and 27 are required to serve in the military.
A 20-year-old soldier killed three fellow servicemen at a military base near Voronezh in November 2020. In 2019, a young recruit killed eight service members in a similar way. He said he was bullied and abused in the army.
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