Two Russian soldiers drinking in a Ukrainian bar didn’t take well to officers of the Russian FSB intelligence service berating them for imbibing while in uniform, so they shot them with their military-issued weapons, killing three, Yahoo News reports.
Two contracted Russian military members–meaning they aren’t conscripts–Sgt. Sergei Obukhov and Junior Sgt. Igor Sudin of the 8th Artillery Regiment of the Russian Black Sea Fleet were drinking in their uniforms in a bar in Kherson when four members of the FSB’s Military Task Force No. 9 saw them and chided them for drinking idly.
Fed up with being browbeaten by the Russian Secret Police, Obukhov removed his firearm and fired a few rounds into the floor. As one of the FSB officers, Sergei Privalov, tried to wrest the gun away, Sudin grabbed his AK-47 assault rifle–because just like in many Red states, you can carry a weapon into a bar in a war-torn Ukraine city ’cause nothing at all can go wrong combining alcohol and guns–and started spraying the room with bullets. Privalov and his colleague, Igor Yakubinsky, returned fire.
When everyone was either shot or dead, the toll was taken: Obukhov, Privalov and Yakubinsky; Sudin and a third FSB agent, D.A. Borodin, were wounded. An unnamed fourth FSB agent fled the fight without injury.
The Russian military in Ukraine have been vexed with significant problems ranging from alcohol abuse to committing war crimes and everything in between: Western analysts noted that Russia is increasing bonuses to get more conscripts to volunteer to fight in Ukraine as casualties mount. Reports also say that basic supplies are in short supply behind Russian lines, with soldiers having to fend for themselves by stealing items from civilians. Other reports say that Putin is pulling a Trump and not paying his contractors.