Translated material
Lost minibus
The signal about the hostage taking was received by the Anapa police department at 12.30. As it turned out, 15 minutes earlier, a man entered a minibus in the suburban village of Vityazevo, grabbed a sawn-off shotgun and declared all passengers hostages. The terrorist first demanded to be taken to the airport, and then suddenly changed his mind and released the driver to negotiate with the authorities, who called the police.
A special group was immediately formed, which included employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB and the prosecutor's office. Ten members of the Alpha special forces unit were also called from Novorossiysk. At the scene of the incident, investigators saw a minibus in which three frightened women and a man with a sawed-off shotgun were sitting, shouting something loudly. Quite quickly (given the small size of the village), the detectives established that they were dealing with a local resident, Igor Spiridonov, who had long been registered with the PND. Moreover, the police twice charged him with illegal possession of weapons and cultivation of drug-containing plants, but each time it ended in forced treatment in a mental hospital.
The minibus was cordoned off and negotiations began. First, the terrorist asked to bring his son in exchange for the hostages’ freedom. Then he began to shout that there was no need to traumatize the boy’s psyche and that if they brought him in, he would immediately kill everyone. Then Spiridonov ordered his relatives to be delivered from Vityazev, and then his friends, one by one. The police car barely had time to bring the requested people. At the same time, Spiridonov’s conversations with relatives and friends, according to the special services, resembled nonsense.
In the end, the police managed to persuade the criminal to release one of the hostages. A woman who got out of the minibus said that the terrorist was behaving completely inappropriately. Therefore, they decided to try to separate the madman from the other two hostages. Soon a suitable opportunity presented itself. Mr. Spiridonov expressed a desire to travel around the area with the city prosecutor. A disguised Alpha employee invited the terrorist into his car, and he even got out of the minibus. However, sensing something was wrong, Spiridonov began firing a gun at the car where the “prosecutor” was sitting. Then the Alpha sniper fired a single shot at the terrorist.