Russian soldier ‘flees base with 8 Kalashnikovs’

The Russian military on Sunday was hunting for a young soldier who is suspected of escaping from a military base in the Urals region with eight stolen Kalashnikov assault rifles, officials said.

The soldier, a conscript born in 1992, disappeared from a military base in the Yekaterinburg region overnight Tuesday, the RIA Novosti news agency quoted a statement from the military region’s headquarters as saying.

“After checking the weapons where he had been carrying out his duties, it was discovered that eight AKS-74U (Kalashnikov) assault rifles were missing,” the statement added.

RIA Novosti said that teams from the ministry of defence, military prosecutors and the security service had arrived on the ground to locate the escaped soldier.

The police spokesman for the region, Valery Gorelykh, told the agency that a reward of $3,000 would be paid to anyone providing information about the soldier’s whereabouts.

He said interior ministry officials from the largely Muslim Bashkortostan region where the soldier was from have also been mobilised.