A local government deputy set off a series of grenades at a council meeting in western Ukraine, killing at least one and leaving several in critical condition among 26 injured.
A handful of grenades were thrown into a local government meeting at Keretsky in Transcarpathia (Zakarpattia) on Friday morning, a region in the west of the nation far from the front lines. Ukrainian government media outlet Ukrinform relays that 26 people were injured, six of them “gravely”, and one person was killed.
The meeting was being recorded and video footage of the attack has been released by police, showing a man in a dark coat entering the packed council room as the meeting was ongoing and blocking the door while listening to proceedings briefly. As an animated discussion continues the man interjects, shouting at the officers sitting at the head table while pulling the grenades out of his coat pocket.
As the video shows, even as he pulls the pins and throws the grenades into the middle of the floor nobody present appears to react until after a series of blasts which tears the room apart.
Ukrainian media states the man who threw the grenades was himself a deputy, or local politician, and that he was among the wounded.
The Kyiv Independent reports police are treating the blasts as a potential terrorist attack and that the councilor alleged to have launched the attack is an elected member of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People Party called Serhii Batryn. The deputy is reported to have gotten into a heated argument with other local politicians over the council’s 2024 budget, and payments and bonuses to be paid to council members, which he apparently disagreed with.
Police have not confirmed these assertions about motives and identity made in Ukrainian media.
The apparent attack at the council meeting is not the first time the widespread proliferation of military equipment occuring as a natural consequence of the war in the country has seen fatalities by secondary effect. As previously reported, a top military aide in Ukraine was killed this year after a grenade he was presented as a birthday present exploded. Apparently, the man had been playing with the live munition at home with his family, and his son was also injured.
The head of Poland’s police was injured last year after a grenade launcher he’d been given as a gift by a Ukrainian counterpart went off at his office. Apparently, the Polish recipients didn’t understand they had been given a live weapon, assuming it was instead a decorative piece.
This story is developing and more follows