In Dnipro, Conscript Shoots Dead National Guard Platoon. Five People Killed

In connection with the incident, the head of the National Guard has resigned.

Overnight in Dnipro, at the Yuzhmash plant, conscript Artem Ryabchuk shot dead a National Guard platoon and fled with weapons. He killed five and wounded five more, reports Liga.net. 

The shooter was detained the morning of the same day. He surrendered on his own. The motives for his actions are being established, but the Interior Ministry is considering versions involving hazing or mental disorders.

As adviser to Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko told the publication, in any case Ryabchuk faces the strictest punishment. “He will sit his whole life.

Details of the tragedy

On January 27 at 03:40 at the Yuzhmash plant, conscript soldier Artemiy Ryabchuk, during the issuing of weapons, shot the National Guard military guard detail with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, after which he fled with assault rifles and ammunition. He killed four fellow servicemen and one civilian woman.

A video capturing the moment of the incident has appeared online.

He was detained at 09:20 near Dnipro, in Podhorodne. The weapon was on him. He contacted law enforcement himself.

“Ryabchuk, while in the village (Podhorodne – town – ed.), asked a random woman to call the police and report his location,” the regional office of the State Bureau of Investigation in Poltava said.

After the detention, Ryabchuk described the sequence of events to law enforcement. In the interrogation video, the soldier appears calm outwardly and sometimes smiles.

“I am in an alert group. It has automatic rifles stored in a small locked box. I took a rifle. Our pouches are beige, and there are two magazines of 10 rounds each. I loaded the first magazine and fired at those two in the weapons storage room... One conscript of the senior draft managed to run away,” he says.

According to him, the operator in the room was supposed to contact the military unit every 30 minutes to report the situation, and “so that she wouldn’t report, I fired at her.”

Afterward, Ryabchuk took all the rifle magazines he could from the safe and fled. At the exit from the plant territory he ran into a female guard who refused to let him out.

“I said: ‘Open up, I need to get out urgently.’ She replied: ‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.’ I shot her in the head. Then I opened one of the doors and started firing at the door lock, hoping it would break and I could pass. It didn’t work,” Ryabchuk recounts.

He walked around the territory, found a place he could jump over. He cut the wire and escaped. He walked through residential areas looking for shelter. “Then I got onto the highway and caught a car. A woman drove me to the left bank. I went wherever my eyes took me,” Ryabchuk says.

The slain civilian woman was an employee of the non-departmental security service, sitting at the checkpoint; the shooter did not know her, Gerashchenko said. According to him, more than 20 people were at the scene in total: “This is a barracks. There is a permanent guard post there, a whole security system for a huge enterprise.”

Three of the wounded are in serious condition, while the lives of the other two are not in danger. “The 22-year-old servicewoman is in extremely serious condition. She has bullets in her abdomen, thigh and shoulder,” Gerashchenko says.

Ryabchuk was born in 2001 in Izmail, Odesa Region. “He grew up without a father and has two sisters. He served for six months. His duties included guarding the territory as part of a duty detail. He was not admitted to state secrets,” Gerashchenko claims.

Versions of the tragedy

Currently there are two main versions of the tragedy: non-regulation relations or mental disorders. The case is being investigated by the State Bureau of Investigation. A case has been opened under the article on intentional murder.

Anton Gerashchenko 
adviser to the head of the Interior Ministry

If it was non-regulation relations, then why shoot the woman who was at the checkpoint? He didn’t even know her... Why shoot the 22-year-old National Guard servicewoman he served with?.. He shot another man who was asleep. What non-regulation relations are these? If he had shot his tormentors, that would be logical. All versions are being studied for now.

If it turns out the motive was non-regulation relations, then “those who allowed this must be held responsible,” explains the adviser to the head of the Interior Ministry: “The commanders who were obliged to monitor the psychological state of the fighters and who should have known about the conflict. It most likely began not at 03:40, but earlier. The commanders must be checked, the surviving servicemen who knew him must be interviewed. Character references must be obtained from his place of residence, study and previous work to understand his psychological profile.”

“Two months ago he broke up a fight between servicemen, then reported the incident to the leadership. They did not react at all, but instead his own comrades started harassing him and calling him a snitch,” said Yuliya Yatsyk, a member of the Verkhovna Rada committee on law enforcement from the Servant of the People faction, speaking to the publication.

According to her, preliminary information on the case was passed to her by law enforcement officers who took part in the detention.

“What exactly was happening there remains off-camera, I cannot say. But of course he harbored a grudge. He nursed it for almost two months, until he was granted access and permission to use weapons and these events occurred,” the MP says.

It will also be examined how Ryabchuk passed the medical commission, on the findings of which he was granted the right of access to combat weapons.

A commission will be created to investigate all the circumstances, says Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi: “It will examine the circumstances that could have led to such actions by the soldier. It will study how Ryabchuk passed the military medical commission and his mental state at the time he was granted access to weapons. Conclusions will be drawn, including personnel ones.”

Monastyrskyi wants to analyze how conscript service is organized, what its advantages and disadvantages are, and what must be radically changed.

What next

A preventive measure for Ryabchuk will be chosen at the Kirovskyi District Court of Dnipro, said Oleksandr Bilka, spokesperson for the Poltava regional office of the State Bureau of Investigation. The hearing time is not yet known.

“He faces only life imprisonment... I would like to see the judge who would give him anything other than life. Such people must be isolated from society forever,” Gerashchenko claims. If a psychiatric examination finds him insane, Ryabchuk will still be isolated: “We don’t want him to kill anyone else.”

As part of the investigation, the actions of National Guard leadership will be checked: “how he prepared there, how he got access to weapons and so on,” Gerashchenko says.

The State Bureau of Investigation has already opened a case against the National Guard. It is assumed that National Guard officials, under the conditions of a special period, treated military service carelessly while organizing security for important state facilities and ensuring service at those facilities. The sanction of the preliminary qualification article provides for five to seven years in prison.

Next week an extraordinary meeting of the law enforcement committee is planned, says Yanchenko: “We will invite representatives of the National Guard, the State Bureau of Investigation and the Interior Ministry to find out whether there were other cases there.” According to information from her sources, there were other cases of non-regulation relations between servicemen in Dnipropetrovsk Region.

President Volodymyr Zelensky is also awaiting personnel decisions following the investigation. He expressed condolences to the families of the dead and said the shooter’s motives and how such a thing became possible must be analyzed in maximum detail. “Mandatory personnel conclusions must be drawn in the near future,” Zelensky added.

At the same time, Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine Mykola Balan resigned over the incident.

Mykola Balan
commander of the National Guard

At 3:59 I received a message about an extraordinary event that occurred in Dnipro. A group of officers from the Main Directorate was immediately formed and arrived at the scene of the tragedy at dawn. The commander is responsible for any actions, both good and bad. This morning I expressed my wish and wrote a report to the Minister of Internal Affairs, a petition to the President of Ukraine for resignation and release from the post of commander of the National Guard.