- Russian soldier Dmitry Lobovikov killed seven soldiers with a grenade while drunk.
- He was found guilty of murder at a Russian court on Wednesday.
A Russian soldier was sentenced to 23 years in prison after killing seven of his soldiers with a grenade, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Dmitry Lobovikov, a former junior sergeant in the Russian military, threw a grenade into one of the rooms in the Belgorod barracks where his fellow soldiers were sleeping in January 2023, according to the outlet, cited by The Moscow Times and Novaya Gazeta Europe.
It killed seven people and injured 16 others.
Lobovikov was found guilty of murder by a jury at the 2nd Western District Military Court on Wednesday.
Court spokesperson Irina Zhirnova told TASS that Lobovikov was sentenced to 23 years in a high-security prison colony, fined 70,000 rubles, or around $788, and stripped of his military rank after being found guilty of murder.
There are varying reports on the cause of the incident. Lobovikov said that he was intoxicated and that it was an accident that could be attributed to "stupidity and alcohol," TASS reported.
Additionally, Lobovikov's lawyers said in court that he had lost consciousness after consuming alcohol with sedatives, causing the grenade to slip out of his hands, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported.
However, a Kommersant report, cited by Newsweek, said the incident occurred after Lobovikov took the pin out of a grenade and became frustrated with one soldier who didn't know how to put it back in.
Before the incident, Lobovikov had attempted to reprimand the same troops for poor behavior, according to a post by RBC cited by Novaya Gazeta Europe.
He was found guilty of attempted murder and murder of multiple accounts, in addition to deliberate destruction of property by explosion, TASS reported.
Novaya Gazeta Europe reported that the jury noted he was "deserving of leniency."
Lobovikov's sentencing comes amid low morale and high criminal rates among the Russian army. The country's military personnel were convicted of 116 murders in 2023, according to data published by Russia's Judicial Department of the Supreme Court.
Conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and desensitization to violence could be leading factors exacerbated by alcohol and drug use, according to a statement by the UK defense ministry cited in a previous Business Insider report.