A jobless ex-convict in the Russian Urals has held up a shop at gunpoint just for a pack of cigarettes.

They were among the cheapest cigarettes on sale - filterless "papirosi".

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But they were all the man took when he burst into the kiosk at night in the town of Novaya Lyala, in Sverdlovsk region.

He was arrested shortly afterwards and found to have numerous previous convictions.

Police who seized a home-made gun from the suspect are now trying to establish how he came to have it.

They said the stolen pack of cigarettes was worth 1.5 roubles, or just under five US cents.

Papirosi, which have a distinctive cardboard mouthpiece, have been smoked by Russians for more than a century and are often associated with Stalin's labour camps.

Russia has seen at least two other strange robberies recently:

• On a freezing December evening, a man with a pistol held up a kiosk on Moscow's prestigious Novy Arbat Avenue. He demanded a block of ice-cream and the day's takings from the till - 900 roubles or just over $28 - before escaping.

• A man with a hunting rifle held up an elderly market trader in Voskresensk, near Moscow, and robbed him of two kilograms of khurma (Sharon fruit). The ex-convict was caught and disarmed shortly after the robbery, but it took police considerable time to find out "where he had put the fruit", the newsru.com website reports.