Ukrainian police detain hostage-taker threatening to blow up bank

Ukrainian police detain hostage-taker threatening to blow up bank

A young man who held a bank employee hostage and threatened to detonate a bomb in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Monday has been arrested, the country’s Security Services (SBU) have announced.

The premises of the Universal Bank in the Kyiv’s Leonardo complex “are currently being inspected for explosives”, the SBU said on Twitter.

Pictures released by the authorities on social media show the assailant being held by security forces.

Deputy Interior Minister Anton Guerachtchenko had earlier named the attacker as 32-year-old Uzbek national Karrimov Sukhrob.

He added that Sukhrob claimed to carry a bomb in a backpack that was tied to his leg and would thus detonate if he was killed.

It is the third hostage-taking incident in Ukraine within a fortnight.

On July 21, 13 passengers on a bus in Lutsk, a city in western Ukraine, were held for most of the day by an armed man.

The situation de-escalated after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a video to Facebook endorsing a 2005 animal rights documentary, which was one fo the armed man’s demands.

Then, on July 23, a crime suspect took a regional police chief hostage and forced him to drive around the countryside for hours.