Inmates staged a revolt at a prison in southern Russia on Friday, taking hostages and killing at least one guard, in the latest in a string of prison mutinies in the country in recent months.
Russian state media reported that unspecified numbers of inmates mutinied in Penal Colony No. 19 of the Volgograd region, a maximum security jail that can house up to 1,200 men. State media and regional officials provided few details of the attack, saying only that at least four people had been injured and that officers were conducting an operation to free the hostages.
Mr. Putin said during a regular meeting of Russia’s National Security Council on Friday that he had been briefed on the attack by the head of the country’s prison service. He then asked other senior security officials to provide him with additional details, according to a video released by the Kremlin.
Mr. Putin’s unusually rapid comments, coming less than two hours after the attack was reported, could be a measure of the seriousness of the uprising.
In June, armed prisoners claiming affiliation with the Islamic State took several guards hostage in a pretrial detention center in Rostov, another region of southern Russia. Security forces stormed the facility hours later, killing the attackers and freeing the hostages.
Russian state media and officials did not immediate provide any details about the participants of the Volgograd mutiny or comment on their motivations.
Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.