New Year's Eve passed off peacefully enough in war-torn Ukraine - until a senior lawmaker shot a man in the leg during a testosterone-charged road rage incident. Ukrainians bored by a relative lack of news over the holiday period have been gripped by accounts of the fight between the man and the senior politician that also involved an assault with a bottle.

Local media interviewed the gunshot victim Vyacheslav Khimikus from his hospital bed. He admitted that he had attacked the MP with a bottle before being shot. Khimikus was helping to push a broken-down bus just outside Kiev after stopping his own car but forgetting to switch on his flashing emergency lights.

Into this scene rolled deputy Sergiy Pashynskiy and his wife in a Mercedes Benz.

Khimikus said the lawmaker's wife rolled down her window and began swearing at him. This prompted Khimikus to challenge Pashynskiy - who was in the passenger seat - to come out "and settle things man-to-man".

The ensuing duel saw Khimikus whack Pashynskiy in the head with a bottle before the lawmaker shot him in the leg. "I used the gun only after being hit by a glass bottle and firing a warning shot in the air," various media quoted Pashynskiy as saying.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017