A soldier opened fire on fellow servicemen and civilians in Russian-annexed Crimea on Tuesday, killing four people in what appears to have been a random attack. Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol — a major Black Sea port city on the Crimean peninsula — confirmed the incident in a post on Telegram, describing it as "a tragedy."

According to Razvozhayev, the gunman first shot his fellow soldiers, killing one and wounding another, before turning his fire on civilians in the village of Khmelnytske. Three civilians died: two men aged 71 and 59, and a 64-year-old woman. Three other people were also injured. The attacker was subsequently detained, and authorities said emergency services, investigators and forensic experts were working at the scene. Doctors were described as doing "everything possible" to save those wounded.

The gunman has not been publicly identified, and no information has been released about which branch of the Russian armed forces he belonged to. His nationality was not specified and no motive has been established. Razvozhayev urged residents to remain calm and to rely only on official information, cautioning against the spread of unverified rumours about the attacker's identity or motives.

Crimea, a strategically significant peninsula jutting into the Black Sea, was seized and annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014 in a move condemned by the vast majority of the international community as illegal occupation. Russia has maintained a large military presence there since, and following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the peninsula has served as a launchpad for strikes against Ukrainian territory. Ukraine has in turn increasingly targeted Crimea with drone and missile attacks aimed at disrupting Russian military logistics in the south.

The shooting adds to the pressures on Russian-controlled Crimea at a time of heightened military activity. While internal incidents involving Russian soldiers are rarely publicised by Russian-installed authorities, Tuesday's attack was significant enough that Razvozhayev addressed it publicly, suggesting the scale and visibility of the violence made silence impossible.