A man who took four people hostage inside a Citibank branch in downtown Moscow surrendered peacefully a few hours later.
The man, identified by Russian news agencies as a 55-year-old bankrupt businessman, claimed to have a bomb.
The hostages, who included three bank employees and one customer, were freed unharmed.
One of them was Gleb Bryanski, the deputy editor of the TASS news agency, who said the man who seized the bank "didn't look like a hardened criminal but like a desperate person.”
“He was really nervous, constantly apologizing and smoking a lot," Bryanski added.
