MOSCOW – A gunman took a city bus on Tuesday and held about 20 people hostage in western Ukraine after posting online complaints about the country’s politics, according to police and local media.
The man was armed with a firearm and explosives, the Ukrainian national police said in a statement. Videos and photos of the city, Lutsk, in northwestern Ukraine, showed police officers pulling pedestrians away from the scene. Security forces were seen sheltering behind utility poles and police cars.
At noon, a blast had been fired from an automatic weapon, and video of the scene showed bullet holes in a bus window, local media reported. There were no reports of victims.
In a video posted online, a man identified in the Ukrainian media as the attacker was looking bleakly at the camera as he cradled a shortened version of a Kalashnikov rifle. He was wearing a black shirt and beret. In a short clip, the man said he was protesting the “system in Ukraine,” without clarifying what exactly that meant.
Another publication that social network users attributed to the hijacker said “Happy anti-system day” and “don’t kid yourself.”
The author of the publication demanded that members of Parliament, ministers and leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church post online messages saying “I am a legal terrorist.”
The man spoke and wrote in Russian, although Ukrainian is most commonly used in western regions, which include Lutsk. Police told local media that they were negotiating with the man.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement that the hijacker had called the police to announce that he had captured the city bus. Zelensky said he had ordered the domestic intelligence agency, the SBU, to appear on the scene.
In the early years of the separatist war in eastern Ukraine, volunteers from paramilitary groups fought much of the Ukrainian side. Over the years, some military weapons they carried at the front, including automatic rifles, hand grenades, and other explosives, leaked from the arsenals and have been used in crimes far from the front line, including domestic violence.
The spread of weapons of war and relatively lax arms laws have meant that Ukraine has a higher prevalence of weapons in society than other European nations.
Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kiev, Ukraine.
