A court fined a pensioner who tried to shoot down a UAV himself and confiscated his shotgun. This is likely the first such ruling in Russia

A court fined a pensioner who tried to shoot down a UAV himself and confiscated his shotgun. This is likely the first such ruling in Russia

In July 2026, a magistrate in the urban-type settlement of Yelan in Russia’s Volgograd Region fined a local pensioner 40,000 rubles for shooting at drones, Verstka found.

According to the appellate ruling, the man tried to shoot down UAVs flying over his yard with a single-barrel hunting shotgun. After firing several shots, he called 112, informed emergency services about what had happened, waited for police officers, pointed out the site of the “presumed crash of the UAV” and “voluntarily surrendered the hunting shotgun.”

After questioning the pensioner, police opened an administrative case for firing a weapon in a place not designated for that purpose (Part 2 of Article 20.13 of the Administrative Offenses Code). As the court ruling states, the man had not previously been held liable for similar offenses.

The magistrate found the Volgograd pensioner guilty and, in addition to the fine, ordered the confiscation of his TOZ-34 REM 12-gauge shotgun. The man tried to challenge this in the Yelansky District Court with the help of a lawyer, but lost.

In his motion, he stated that he had “fired the shots from the weapon under conditions of justified fear for public safety and the lives of citizens, perceiving the unidentified UAVs as potential sabotage targets.”

The appellate court concluded that the pensioner was not “in a state of extreme necessity” and that the case contained no evidence “indicating the compelled nature of his actions and the existence of a danger to him that could not have been eliminated by other means.” In the judge’s opinion, the pensioner committed a “gross violation” that “could have entailed harm to the life and health of citizens.”

The Volgograd pensioner likely became the first Russian to be punished for trying to shoot down a UAV on his own. Verstka analyzed court rulings on firing weapons in unauthorized places over the past five years and found no other similar cases.

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