You're reading: Wild gun battle in Dnipro leaves 2 dead, 5 injured

Two veterans of Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine were killed in a shooting in the center of Dnipro, a city of 1 million people some 500 kilometers south-east of Kyiv, on the night of July 24.

Around 8 p.m., several men started shooting machine guns at six men who they were meeting at an outdoor restaurant. Two men were killed and one injured.

One of the men fired back at the assailants with a handgun, injuring four men from the attacking party. The wounded were taken to the hospital and placed under police guard.

The slain men were former members of the Ukrainian military, Alexey Vagner and Maksym Ivaschuk. Both fought against the Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Ukraine.

The injured man who shot back at the attackers is Edmond Saakyan, a Dnipro lawyer active in helping supply the Ukrainian army as a volunteer.

Saakyan, who also suffered gunshot injuries, was taken to the city’s main Mechnikov Hospital. He and his family are under police protection.

Two of the four wounded suffered serious injuries.

Two of the four detained attackers were charged with murder and are facing a minimum of 10 years in prison.

Dnipro police said that the men were meeting to talk about business and got into a quarrel. The meeting was taking place for about an hour when one of the sides opened fire.

“Apparently, they did not agree on something and decided to solve the problem with violence,” Dnipro police administrator Oleh Groz said on July 25.

Saakyan’s friend, Maksym Myroshnichenko, told the Kyiv Post that the meeting involved the business activities of Saakyan’s brother Eduard, who was also present in the cafe, and his business partner from Tel Aviv, whom Myroshnichenko couldn’t identify. Saakyan owns a development business.

Myroshnichenko said that the Saakyan brothers brought war veterans Vagner and Ivaschuk to the meeting “as a backup, because they were hard to intimidate.”

At first, some linked the shooting to a clash that happened on May 9, Victory Day, between the war veterans, including Vagner, and civilian supporters of the Opposition Bloc, a party that is widely considered pro-Russian.