The “multifunctional centers”, known as MFZ, are a pride of the Moscow city administration under Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

Many visits to the authorities can be done quickly there.

At the entrance you get a number, and if you have to wait longer than a quarter of an hour for your call, you get a free coffee - at least in the MFZ at the Kiev train station in the west of the Russian capital.

Often the promise does not have to be kept.

Above all women work in the MFZ;

they wear beige-brownish blouses and skirts and badges that say “We are the mayor's team” and recently also references to a vaccination against Covid-19.

Rapid tests for the coronavirus are also offered in the MFZ, and the mask requirement is implemented more rigorously in the center than elsewhere in Russia.

Friedrich Schmidt

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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That is the background to the violence that shook many residents of the capital on Tuesday, also because of the awareness that it could affect anyone who deals with the authorities there.

In an MFZ in southwest Moscow, a man opened fire on staff and visitors, killed a security guard and an administrative clerk and seriously injured four people, including a ten-year-old girl.

A policeman who happened to be nearby and unarmed heard the gunshots and rushed over.

Witnesses are said to have shown him the rifleman, who at this point was already moving away from the building and quickly leaving.

The policeman overpowered the armed shooter, who was armed with a pistol and knife, and arrested him.

25 cartridges and a lot of cash

The shooter is a 45-year-old man who, according to Russian media reports, worked for the foreign intelligence service SWR until his retirement and has the military rank of lieutenant colonel.

He is said to have been bothered by the fact that he was asked to put on mouth and nose protection when entering the MFZ.

The man refused and attempts were made to get him out.

Thereupon he is said to have drawn the pistol and shot, first at the administrative clerk at the entrance who distributed the waiting numbers, then at the security guard who pounced on him.

The employees and visitors of the MFZ hid in the offices.

The shooter was described as aggressive, having struggled.

Agency reports said he spoke "of the corona virus and a world conspiracy";

he doesn't believe in the virus and vaccines.

It was also reported that the shooter had 25 cartridges with him and a large amount of cash: more than 27,000 euros, almost 200 dollars and at least 25,000 rubles (just under 300 euros).

Doctors were still fighting for the life of one of the injured on Wednesday, as Mayor Sobyanin announced.

He praised the killed security guard and the policeman who succeeded in arresting the shooter as "real heroes".

The policeman should get a medal.