A Russian man died after he pulled the pin out of a hand grenade in order to take and post photographs of him holding it, reports said Tuesday.

Alexander "Sasha" Chechik, 26, had sent an image to his friend showing himself holding the explosive moments before it detonated and killed him instantly in the incident in the city of Labinsk in south west Russia, police said.

According to local news outlet Kuban.kp.ru, the man had sent a text to a friend, including a picture of the grenade in his hand with the pin pulled out from the device lying nearby. Police added that he had sent several images to friends where he posed with the hand grenade and it indicated that he had not intended to take his own life.

In the text exchange, one of the man’s friends asked him where he is and if everything is ok.

"It depends by what you mean 'OK,'" he replied, along with posting the photograph of the grenade.

"Listen, don’t f--- around," his friend then replied to the text before following it up with: "Where are you," to which they reportedly received no response.

Police have been treating the death as an accident and not a suicide.

According to Russia’s Interfax news service, police have launched an investigation into the illegal trafficking of weapons and ammunition.

A source who spoke to Interfax said Chechik did not manage to insert the hand grenade pin back in.

Police said they believed Chechik expected the grenade would not explode and would be safe as long as he didn't throw it.

Investigators believed that the 26-year-old was showing off to his friends when he sent pictures with the grenade and it went off in his car moments after that.

Images from the car and the image of him holding the grenade were posted on social media. The image from the car had been blurred as it showed graphic images of the scene of carnage from the blast after Chechik was left with catastrophic injuries to his lower body.

"A pre-investigation check has been assigned," Natalia Smyatskaya, senior assistant to the Head of the Department of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for the Krasnodar Territory said, Kuban.kp.ru reported.

Grenades and other explosives require handling with utmost care and caution and should only be performed by trained personnel. Some videos posted on YouTube through the years showed how some military grenade training can go wrong if not taught or handled with caution.