Story By:  Ana Marjanovic, Sub-Editor: Michael Leidig, Agency:  Newsflash

This is the shocking moment a heartbroken man signs the cross in a Russian church before pointing a gun to his head and pulling the trigger.

The attempted suicide took place in the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg on 9th June.

According to local reports, the 31-year-old man – not named by officials – was depressed over a failed love affair and went to his local church to kill himself.

Armed with a pistol knelt in front of the church altar and shot himself in the head.

Grim CCTV footage shows the gunman making the sign of the cross before he pulls out a pistol with his right hand and puts it to his head.

Another worshipper notices and begins moving away and after a few agonising seconds the gunman fires and falls face-first on the church floor.

Astonishingly local media reports say that he somehow survived the point-blank range shooting and was rushed to nearby Elizabethan Hospital.

Medics say he is in a state of “moderate severity.”

The firearm belonged to the man and he was a regular attendee at the church.

But police believe the gun was what Russians call traumatic pistol, which usually fires non-lethal rounds.

The National Guard of Russia said in a statement: “A security detachment in the district of Krasnogvardeysky in St Petersburg, having received a call at 17.53 about an incident in the Church of the Annunciation… arrived at the place where, according to preliminary information, a citizen born in 1991, while in the church, shot himself in the head with what is believed to be a traumatic pistol.

“An ambulance was called to the scene. Employees of the National Guard secured the area until the arrival of the investigative team.”

Traumatic pistols are less-than-lethal guns that usually fire stubby, steel-cored rubber bullets at less velocity than a regular bullet.