Ukraine councilor detonates grenades at meeting, wounding 26, in attack captured on video

A Ukrainian village councilor set off hand grenades at a meeting in an attack that was captured on video and left 26 people wounded, the country’s national police said Friday. The incident took place Friday morning at the headquarters of the village council of Keretsky, in western Ukraine’s mountainous Zakarpattia region.

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

The man then pulled three hand grenades from his pockets, released the safety pins and dropped them on the floor, triggering explosions as those in the meeting scream.

“As a result, 26 people were wounded, six of whom are in a grave condition,” the police statement said, adding that medics were trying to resuscitate the man who threw the grenades.

The police said the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) had opened a terrorism investigation. Police also opened a probe into the illegal handling of weapons.

The video released by the police came from a live video stream of the meeting provided by the town council on social media, which showed the man walking in more than 1.5 hours into the debate and standing momentarily by the door before taking the grenades from his pockets.

It then showed chaos inside the small room, which went dark and was filled with smoke, with injured people on the floor.

Authorities did not name the man but the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper reported that he was identified as Serhiy Batryn, a parliamentarian who is a member of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party.

A woman who was watching the live broadcast of the council session reported the explosion to authorities, Ukrainian Pravda reported.