A close adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine died in an apparent accident Monday when a grenade that he’d been given as a birthday present exploded, local officials said.
Major Hennadiy Chastiakov, an assistant to General Valery Zaluzhny, was celebrating his 39th birthday when he showed his family gifts he’d received from colleagues. Chastiakov’s son, 13, was handling the grenade when disaster struck.
“First, the son took the ammunition and started turning the ring,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said in an account of the death based on preliminary investigations posted on Telegram. “Then the serviceman took the grenade from the child and pulled out the ring, provoking a tragic explosion.”
Chastiakov was killed and his son was seriously injured in the blast, according to the Kyiv Post. Some initial reports of the shocking incident suggested it may have been an assassination attempt from Russia, but Ukrainian law enforcement sources told the Post it was instead a “tragic accident.”
The newspaper reported that the deadly device was one of six grenades given to Chastiakov in a wooden box along with a bottle of whiskey presented by a colleague, Colonel Timchenko. “It’s hard to surprise you—that’s why I’m giving you grenades and a bottle of good whiskey,” Timchenko said to Chastiakov as he handed over the box, according to three witnesses present at the time.
Images purportedly from the scene of the blast shared by Ukrainska Pravda appear to show several grenades surrounded by gift bags on a coffee table.
“Obviously, Chastiakov took it as a joke,” a source in the SBU, Ukraine’s internal security service, told the Post. “Because later he took the children from school and began to sort out gifts with them. He thought that in the box were not combat grenades, but glasses of a specific shape.”
The source added that the adviser’s death was almost certainly a “tragic case” in which one of the grenades “detonated due to careless handling.” They said the investigation remains ongoing but currently there is “no reason to talk about either an attempt or a Russian trail.”
Sharing his “unspeakable pain” at Chastiakov’s death, Zaluzhny wrote in a tribute Monday that his adviser had “been a reliable shoulder for me, fully devoting his life to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the fight against Russian aggression.” The general, who was criticized by President Zelensky’s office for saying the war was at a stalemate this week, said that Chastiakov is survived by his wife and four children.
According to the Post, Chastiakov was killed by a German-made DM51 hand grenade. Figures from the German government show that 100,000 hand grenades have been supplied to Kyiv as part of its sprawling military aid packages.