Weapons Shown In KGB Shooting Video

A Minsk man and a KGB officer have been shot during an attempt to search an apartment.

The press service of the Belarusian KGB showed footage of officers of the agency rushing into an apartment and one of them being fatally wounded by a shotgun. In response, they open fire with pistols and kill the shooter - Andrei Zeltser. Zerkalo.io tells us what weapons they managed to distinguish in the video footage.

"Today, during special measures to raid the appartments, where people involved in "terrorist activities" might be found, a particularly dangerous criminal opened fire in one of the apartments. As a result, the "criminal" fatally wounded an employee of the State Security Committee," said the KGB.

The footage shows a resident of the apartment holding a double-barrelled shotgun with vertical barrels. To all appearances, this is one of the most popular models of smooth-bore weapon produced by the Izhevsk Mechanical Plant - IZh-27.

The weapon was developed in the 1970s on the basis of another famous Soviet "vertical" rifle, the IZh-12. A feature of the gun, among other things, was the vented sighting bar (it can be clearly seen in the video - there are longitudinal holes in the upper part of the gun). This gun was available in various calibers, including the most popular, the twelfth caliber (barrel diameter 18.5 mm). More than 1.5 million guns were produced.

The security forces responded by firing pistols. It seems that the KGB officers are not holding the usual Soviet Makarovs, the weapons look completely different. The man on the left seems to be holding a Glock 17 with an underbarrel flashlight.

This Austrian pistol has been used by Belarusian security services in various units since the noughties, when the arms embargo wasn't imposed on the country yet. "The Glock was the first popular pistol with extensive use of polymers, it features uniquely long life, high accuracy and a roomy magazine for 17 bullets of the 9×19 Parabellum. During the 2020-2021 protests, the Glock 17 was repeatedly seen in the videos of the dispersals.

The weapon also somewhat resembles the modern Sig Sauer P250 police pistol (also for 9×19mm bullets), made using a modular system, but there was no information about the Belarusian security forces having any of these.

The pistol of the soldier on the right is slightly worse visible, but it does not seem to be a Soviet model either - not a Makarov or an automatic Stechkin. It's probably a German-Swiss Sig Sauer P226, also one of the best models in the world. Like the Glock, the P226 uses the 9×19 mm bullets.

The P226s most likely appeared in Belarus in the early tens - in March 2012, the state media reported that the Sig Sauer pistols had been purchased six months earlier.