Ukraine council member detonates grenades at meeting, wounding 26 people, in attack caught on video

A Ukrainian village council member detonated grenades during a meeting in an attack captured on video that injured 26 people, the Ukrainian National Police said on Friday. The accident occurred on Friday morning at the headquarters of the Kiritsky village council in the mountainous Zakarpattia region in western Ukraine.

a Video posted by police on Facebook It showed a man dressed in black entering a council meeting during a heated discussion. The faces of the man and other people at the meeting are blurred in the clip.

The man then pulled three grenades from his pockets, then released safety pins and dropped them on the ground, setting off explosions as the meeting attendees screamed.

“As a result, 26 people were injured, six of them in serious condition,” the police statement said, adding that paramedics were trying to revive the man who threw the grenades.

Police said the Ukrainian intelligence service had opened a terrorism investigation. Police also opened an investigation into illegal weapons handling.

The video released by police came from a live video feed of the meeting provided by the City Council on social media, which showed the man pacing for more than an hour and a half in the discussion and standing momentarily by the door before taking grenades from his pockets. .

Then it showed the chaos inside the small room, which was dark and filled with smoke, with wounded people on the floor.

The authorities did not mention the man’s name, however Ukrainska Pravda newspaper reported He has been identified as Serhiy Paterin, a parliamentarian and member of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.

The Ukrainian newspaper Pravda reported that a woman who was watching the live broadcast of the council session informed the authorities of the explosion.