Villager uncovers rifle stockpile

A RUSSIAN villager discovered a stockpile of Kalashnikov assault rifles hidden in the wooden crates he bought for 500 roubles (€12) from a stranger to use as fuel for his stove.

A total of 79 guns and 253 cartridges were stuffed in more than 60 wooden boxes bought by a man from Sovkhoznyy village in Udmurtia, 1,300km south-east of Moscow. The 57-year-old man said he bought them from a truck driver to heat his home.

The rifles, produced in 1959-1960, were en route to a recycling plant from Izhmash, one of the country’s oldest arms manufacturers, the company said.

Russia’s deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin, appointed last December to oversee the country’s defence industry, said: “!I will hold a meeting with Izhmash about its firearms next week and we will deal with this miracle.”

A deadly mixture of corner cutting and negligence still plagues Russia’s defence industry 20 years after the fall of the USSR, with Russia still the world’s second- largest arms exporter.

“I imagine how scared the West is of our nuclear arms,” Facebook user Oleg Zabara wrote in a comment on Rogozin’s post.

“Not because they exist, but because they could accidentally fall on them, just like those rifles got to that old man.”