Robbery in Russian: a tourist "took" a bank on an island in the Arctic Ocean
The polar archipelago of Svalbard is one of the most isolated places on the planet. That is why the police of the Norwegian city of Longyearbyen were puzzled when a bank was robbed in the city for the first time in its history. An armed Russian single-handedly attacked a financial institution, took cash and fled.
The Norwegian island of West Svalbard, on which Longyearbyen is located, has only 2,000 inhabitants, so all the townspeople, at least, know each other by sight. This made the disclosure of the "millennium crime" on an almost crime-free icy patch of land, a matter of several hours.
The raider who caused trouble to the sleepy northern town turned out to be a 29-year-old Russian citizen who arrived in Svalbard as a tourist. The guy's prey was 70 thousand Norwegian crowns, which in rubles is about 550 thousand.
The Russian was well prepared for the attack on the branch of the Norwegian Sparebank 1. To get a weapon, the robber turned to a rifle rental point in the city center, where he issued a hunting carbine for his documents. It was not difficult for him to escape with the loot, but from that moment the difficulties began.
Western Svalbard, located 1,050 km from the North Pole, is perhaps the most unpromising place to hide from the police. The nature here is so harsh that the police were more worried about the unlucky gangster not freezing or getting to lunch with a polar bear.
But everything ended well and after a sluggish chase through deep snow, the criminal was caught and given hot tea. The court has so far assigned him 4 weeks of arrest, after which a punishment will be imposed. A resident of Russia is accused of two articles — armed robbery and violation of the law on weapons.