June 1997: Sgt. Artur Vaganov shot and killed ten sleeping soldiers in a breakaway region of Abkhazia in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. He then turned the gun on himself.

Sgt. Artur Vaganov (10)

On June 2, 1997, Sgt. Vaganov, a mentally unstable Russian soldier in a unit posted in the breakaway region of Abkhazia in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, shot and killed 10 sleeping comrades and wounded three others before turning his gun on himself.

Lt. Gen. Dolia Babenkov told the Interfax news agency that Vaganov -- who was probalby drunk or pissed off about a hazing -- had "prepared for the murder beforehand, disabling the weapons" of his fellow conscripts. "He wanted to kill all the 19 men on duty at the 203rd post." 

The rampage was similar to several other incidents in recent years that have plagued the Russian military. A week earlier, Pvt. Yevgeny Gorbunov ran amok outside a military store in the Chita region of Siberia killing five fellow soldiers and an officer. The Russian Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, which defends the rights of conscripts, says the army is suffering an epidemic of soldiers driven to murder by low morale, bullying and ill-treatment from superiors.

Mayhem.net

Artur Vaganov

The Moscow Times

June 5, 1997

GALI, Abkhazia -- One night in June at a lonely Russian post in the small village of Sida, Sergeant Artur Vaganov, 22, of the Russian peacekeeping force here, woke up to commit mass murder.

Very deliberately, he cut the post's communications, gathered together all the weapons and opened fire on his fellow soldiers as they slept in their bunks. He shot dead 10 men and wounded three more before killing himself. The building was still awash with blood the next day, eyewitnesses said.