Alexey Kurvyakov. Photo: Ostorozhno Novosti

Criminal proceedings have begun after four people were killed in a grenade explosion in Russia’s central Tula region, the Investigative Committee announced on Wednesday.

Investigators said the explosion occurred on Tuesday near a house in the village of Kurkino, but provided no other details of the incident, merely stating a criminal case was opened “due to the deaths of four people”.

Telegram news channel ASTRA reported that the grenade had been detonated by Alexey Kurvyakov, a 32-year-old veteran of the war with Ukraine with a long criminal record.

Kurvyakov was drinking with his friends — 29-year-old Andrey, 23-year-old Savely, and Savely’s father — ahead of his birthday, according to Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti. The men began arguing, Ostorozhno Novosti says, over a suspicion that Savely was using drugs. In the course of the quarrel, Kurvyakov took out a grenade which he had brought home from the frontline in Ukraine. The detonation killed three of the men on the spot, while Savely died on the way to hospital.

Friends of Kurvyakov told Ostorozhno Novosti that he considered himself a local “criminal authority”, while independent news outlet Mediazona was able to establish that a resident of the Tula region named Alexey Kurvyakov had been found guilty of robbery and extortion in 2013 and 2017.

More recently, Kurvyakov was a defendant in an extortion case alongside a local businessman who had returned to Russia after fighting for the Wagner mercenary group and two other men. According to a local news source, the Tula News Service, Kurvyakov was due to be tried separately from the other men, who went on trial in 2024.

While Mediazona was able to establish that the court found the three other defendants guilty of extortion in June, it could find no information on Kurvyakov on the court website, meaning he likely went to fight in Ukraine before any case against him came to court.