Gorny shooting

On 25 October 2019, a shooting occurred at a military base in Gorny, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia, approximately 150 kilometres north of the border with Mongolia. A Russian soldier opened fire on ten of his colleagues, killing eight of them. Two of those killed were officers, while the remainder were enlisted men. According to the Wikipedia account of the incident, the shooting took place at 18:20 local time (UTC+09:00), immediately after the shooter had received an AK-74 assault rifle. He fired 26 of the 30 rounds in the rifle's magazine. A Spetsnaz response team arrived at the scene two minutes after the shooting began, and the shooter surrendered without offering any resistance.

The sole suspect identified was Pvt. Ramil Salengalovich Shamsutdinov, born in 1999, a resident of Vagay village in Tyumen Oblast and the son of a retired military commander. He was arrested by the Chita military court following the incident.

Regarding motive, the Russian Ministry of Defence attributed the shooting to Shamsutdinov suffering a nervous breakdown. However, Shamsutdinov's father alleged that severe, ritualized abuse of new recruits by officers and older soldiers had driven his son to carry out the attack. The father quoted his son as saying, "I'm sorry father, I couldn't have done otherwise. Either they'd kill me or I'd kill them," and stated that Ramil did not regret his actions, which he described as "deliberate." Shamsutdinov himself testified that he had faced physical abuse and threats of rape while serving.

In January 2021, Shamsutdinov was sentenced to 24½ years in prison. At the time of sentencing, the Defence Ministry had accepted that he had been subjected to hazing prior to the shooting. Some families of the victims criticized the sentence as too short.

This case is documented on Wikipedia, which cites contemporaneous news coverage from outlets including TIME and The Telegraph at the time of the shooting in October 2019.