Man armed with grenade takes police colonel hostage in Ukraine before running into forest

Manhunt launched for dangerous criminal involved in second hostage-taking in three days

Ukrainian police officers near a site where the man held another officer hostage in Poltava (Press Service of the National Police of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS)

A man armed with a grenade took a senior policeman hostage and drove away with him in Ukraine, before abandoning the car and the officer and fleeing into a forest, police have said.

“Negotiations are ongoing to force the attacker to surrender to the police without harming himself or others,” Anton Gerashchenko said on Facebook earlier, amid the situation in the city of Poltava.

Police were trying to arrest a man suspected of hijacking a vehicle when he took out a grenade and threatened to kill one of the officers, Mr Gerashchenko said.

After negotiations, the man exchanged the police officer for a police colonel and drove off with him in a car provided by police.

Mr Gerashechenko and local authorities say police allowed the man to leave the town "for the safety of citizens".

"The intruder left the car in the middle of the road and ran to the forest. A special operation to detain a dangerous armed criminal is underway. The hostage was released. He is unharmed," the police said on Facebook.

It was the second hostage-taking in Ukraine in three days.

Earlier this week, a man took over a dozen bus passengers hostage in the Ukrainian city of Lutsk, before releasing after them after an unusual intervention from president Volodymyr Zelensky.

The hostage-taker agreed to let the passengers on the bus go free following a 15-minute phone call with the president, Mr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff told reporters.

The man asked Mr Zelensky to post a video message on his Facebook page urging Ukrainians to watch Earthlings, a 2005 documentary narrated by actor Joaquin Phoenix on humanity’s exploitation of animals.