A gunman in Ukraine armed with an automatic rifle and grenades has surrendered to law enforcement and launched 13 hostages following the country’s president consented to his demand to propose the 2005 film Earthlings starring Joaquin Phoenix.

The area of interest film recommendation, delivered by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy around Facebook, served close an hrs-very long standoff in the western Ukrainian metropolis of Lutsk, where 44-calendar year-previous Maksym Kryvosh seized a bus and demanded that dozens of government officials acknowledge to being “terrorists”.

During the hostage crisis, which began on Tuesday early morning, Kryvosh opened fireplace and threw a grenade at a police drone. The stories of computerized gunfire despatched some journalists at the scene diving for cover. No a person was significantly injured all through the standoff. A bullet was reported to have approximately struck the nationwide main of police.

The gunman also spoke with journalists and monitored social media throughout the hostage crisis, although his Twitter account was eventually deactivated. A person hostage, who spoke with a journalist by phone in the course of the crisis, begged them to set the gunman in touch with the president’s business.

Zelenskiy spoke directly with Kryvosh, a spokeswoman claimed, after which three of the hostages ended up unveiled from the bus. The relaxation had been launched shortly soon after he posted a quick online video on line about a Joaquin Phoenix movie crucial of the bad cure of animals.

“The film Earthlings from 2005. All people should view it,” Zelenskiy claimed in the video produced more than Facebook. It was deleted following Kryvosh surrendered and changed with a observe thanking law enforcement and other individuals who assisted close the hostage crisis.

“Human life is the most important worth. We have not shed any one,” Zelenskiy wrote.

Kryvosh is an animal legal rights activist, regional media reported. He experienced also spent approximately a decade in jail on fraud and weapons expenses and was explained by law enforcement as “unstable” just after the incident.

Kryvosh, holding an automated rifle and wearing a beret, wrote a more than 500-website page manifesto and shipped an anti-governing administration screed soon right before he boarded the bus in Lutsk on Tuesday and informed police that he experienced rigged it with explosives.

Late on Tuesday, the Ukrainian interior minister, Arsen Avakov, mentioned: “The film … is a good one particular. And you don’t have to be so screwed up and result in such a horror for the whole state – you can observe it without having that.”