Two men fatally shot 11 people at a Russian military training facility near Ukraine on Saturday, Russia’s defense ministry said.
The attackers were killed by return fire, the Russian military said. They were identified only as citizens of an ex-Soviet nation.
In addition to the 11 fatalities, 15 more were wounded in the slaughter at a firing range in Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders northeastern Ukraine.
Russia’s defense ministry called the shooting a terrorist attack.
The bloodshed came less than a month after Russian leader Vladimir Putin called up 300,000 military reservists. The call-up led to large protests in Russia and sent many military-age men fleeing the country.
“There are few things that will destroy morale and trust more than fratricide,” Mark Hertling, former commander of U.S. forces in Europe, wrote on Twitter. “This level of killing by [ex-Soviets] against Russian recruits will cause exponential degradation of morale of the force.”
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