20:29, 18 August 2026

A resident of a village near Volgograd has been fined for attempting to shoot down a Ukrainian drone.

A police officer takes the rifle from the man. Illustration created by "Caucasian Knot" using AI in the Copilot program.

A pensioner from the village of Yelany, Nikolai Mukhin, has been fined for attempting to independently shoot down a Ukrainian drone flying at night near the Yelansky district. His hunting rifle has also been confiscated. The man does not consider himself guilty and calls the punishment unfair.

In the Volgograd region, a local resident had his hunting rifle confiscated for shooting at night in the yard of his own home. The Yelansky district court upheld the fine and the confiscation of the weapon, rejecting the defense's application of the norms of extreme necessity, despite his confession and the absence of victims.

The incident occurred at night in the working settlement of Yelany. Mukhin heard the noise of drones, got scared, and fired twice into the air with his smoothbore rifle, writes "Kommersant".

The court emphasized that the shooter legally owned the weapon. No damage to property or health was caused. Immediately after the incident, he called the emergency service 112, waited for the police, voluntarily surrendered the weapon, and provided detailed explanations.

The police classified the man's actions as shooting in an unauthorized place . The magistrate's court fined him 40,000 rubles and confiscated the rifle. However, the judge mistakenly indicated the presence of aggravating circumstances in the ruling.

The pensioner appealed the decision, insisting that the harm from a potential drone crash would have been immeasurably greater. The Yelansky district court stated that firearms are a source of increased danger, and shooting in a residential area poses a direct threat to the life and health of citizens. Arguments about self-defense and the absence of victims were not recognized as grounds for exemption from liability.

The appeal partially satisfied the complaint, excluding the mention of aggravating circumstances from the ruling and officially recognizing the call to 112 and the surrender of the weapon as mitigating factors. However, this did not affect the final punishment. The decision came into force.

Nikolai Mukhin stated that he tried to explain to the police that he did not shoot for no reason, but they still issued an administrative protocol. Although the pensioner, as a hunter, had a permit to own a weapon, his rifle was still confiscated, reports the publication "Volgograd Online".

"I didn't hit the drones; it was too high. They say - what if you had hit it, and it fell on a house? Well, first of all, according to their flight trajectory, there were a garden, a forest, and a river - there are no houses there anymore. And secondly, I didn't want to harm anyone. On the contrary, I wanted to prevent that drone from hitting a school or kindergarten, so that more people wouldn't be harmed," the publication quotes the pensioner's words.

Nikolai Mukhin stated that he does not intend to stop at the Yelansky district court and will continue to appeal the fine.

"Caucasian Knot" also reported that in early August, law enforcement detained two girls and one young man in Volgograd for publishing photos and videos of a fire at a Wildberries warehouse; the detainees apologized on record.

Translated automatically via OpenAI from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/425880