On Monday in the city of Izhevsk, the capital city of western Russia’s Udmurt Republic, a man in his early thirties killed two security guards at a school and then preceded to go on a shooting and killing rampage with “two pistols and a lot of ammunition”, killing 15 people including 11 children, and wounded 24, all of but 2 who were also children reportedly. Footage released by investigators showed the man’s dead body in classroom, dressed in all black, with a red swastika in a circle on of his shirt. According to them the gunman killed himself after the attack.

The two firearms carried by the gunman had phrases referencing the 1999 Columbine shooting, such as “Eric” and “Dylan” (the names of the two gunmen), as well as “Columbine.” According to War Noir on Twitter, they appear to be two blank-firing Makarov pistol models converted to take conventional ammunition.

Russia’s Investigative Committee stated: “Currently investigators…are conducting a search of his residence and studying the personality of the attacker, his views and surrounding milieu,” the committee said in a statement. “Checks are being made into his adherence to neo-fascist views and Nazi ideology.” Reportedly the shooter had also been registered at a “psycho-neurological” treatment facility.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin “deeply mourns” the deaths. He described the incident as “a terrorist act by a person who apparently belongs to a neo-fascist organization or group”. Reportedly Putin has sent doctors, psychologists, and neurosurgeons to the site of the shooting about 970km (600 miles) from Moscow. Regional governor Alexander Brechalov said surgeons had carried out a number of operations on the victims who had survived the attack and their injuries reports Reuters.

Footage from shooting *DISCLAIMER GRAPHIC*:

*GRAPHIC* Aftermath pic.twitter.com/MXcwhKPKe7

— OurWarsToday (@ourwarstoday) September 26, 2022

Russia has seen several prominent school shootings in recent years:

In April 2022, an armed man killed two children and a teacher at a kindergarten in the central Ulyanovsk region before committing suicide.

In May 2021, a teenage gunman killed seven children and two adults in the city of Kazan. In September last year, a student armed with a hunting rifle shot dead at least six people at a university in the Urals city of Perm.

In 2018, an 18-year-old student killed 20 people, mostly fellow pupils, in a mass shooting at a college in Russian-occupied Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

However contrasting that to other world superpowers such as the United States of America, the 13 school shootings Russia has had in the 2020s, pales in comparison to the 75 school shootings the U.S has had in the 2020s. (It should be noted several of these incidents for both nations either included injuries and no deaths, or deaths and no injuries, or sometimes were just self-inflicted attacks, however many were shooting attacks as well).