The expert assessed the danger of the weapons found in the basement of the St. Petersburg hotel

Rifles and pistols found in the basement of the St. Petersburg Sputnik Hotel are no longer dangerous. Weapons expert Maxim Popenker told Izvestia about this on June 24.

According to him, the Mosin rifle, like pistols, could have been found in the ground on the battlefields, or could have been obtained from some warehouses. The expert shared that in the 90s, a large number of weapons were stolen from the army or lost in local conflicts. He noted that Dragunov's rifle could have ended up in the basement of the hotel the same way.

"All of this has been stored for a very long time, of course, in completely unsuitable conditions for weapons and does not look suitable for use directly in its found form," he explained.

In the photos of the cache, in addition to the Mosin and Dragunov rifles, Popenker recognized two Tokarev pistols and rocket-propelled anti-tank grenades. He stressed that they also do not pose a danger: the wooden butts have rotted, the metal parts have rusted.

The expert suggested that the weapon could be very old. The Dragunov rifle, according to him, has been produced since 1963 to the present day. The Mosin rifle, in turn, was discontinued after the Great Patriotic War, and the Tokarev pistols were discontinued in the early 50s.

"As for the anti-tank grenade launchers, I see on one that it is an inert training one, on one of the photos you can see the RPG-26, their brand, that is, a training one that does not fire. And, if I'm not mistaken, the year of production is 1988, so this is also a legacy of the USSR," Popenker added.

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A cache of weapons was found in Sputnik on the afternoon of June 24 during repair work. According to a source in Izvestia, the hotel previously belonged to the criminal boss Boris Ivanov (also known as Bob the Collector), who was killed in 1999.