Kalashnikov placed in intensive care unit

MOSCOW - Agence France-Presse

Famous Russian rifle-designer Kalashnikov has been having heart problems and feeling poorly since March, when he stopped showing up for work. AFP photo

Russia’s legendary rifle-designer Mikhail Kalashnikov was recovering in stable condition in intensive care after being hospitalized with general fatigue.

An aide to the 93-year-old father of the AK-47 said Kalashnikov had been having heart problems and feeling poorly since March. “When I visited him at home last week, he told me that nothing seemed to hurt, but that he simply had no strength left,” assistant Nikolai Shklyayev told the RIA Novosti news agency. “It seems that this is just his age showing,” he added. “Kalashnikov told me that he plans to go home soon,” Kalashnikov’s biographer Alexander Uzhanov also said.

Kalashnikov designed his famous rifles, staples of armies across the world for the past half century, at the Izmash factory in the city of Izhevsk and continues to live in the region to this day. He began designing guns army and was assigned by senior officials to help design new rifles and other weapons toward the end of World War II.