A man died after ramming his car into the gates of the Russian embassy in Romania on Wednesday and setting himself on fire inside the vehicle, police said.
Amateur footage posted on social media showed a vehicle in flames and crashed into the gates of the diplomatic mission.
“So far we can’t say that this act is tied to something else other than the driver’s personal circumstances,” Romanian prosecutor Bogdan Staicu told reporters.
Romanian media said the driver headed an NGO for fathers’ rights and was on Tuesday sentenced to 15 years in prison for molesting his underage daughter.
In his last Facebook post, two days before his death, the man wrote that “I am also Ukrainian”.
“We should all consider ourselves Ukrainians until this horrible war ends”, he wrote.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said “it has been communicated that it was not an accident but a planned incident against the Russian representation, the driver having shouted something at the guard”.
The building, located in a wealthy district of Bucharest, has been protected by police barriers on the pavement since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, in order to safeguard the building against any demonstrations.
The street outside was closed to traffic on Wednesday, and forensic, police and intelligence agents were on site, said an AFP journalist at the scene.
