The leader of a Russian doomsday sect has attempted to kill himself as his followers continue to emerge from a cave where they have been waiting for the end of the world.

Pyotr Kuznetsov was in hospital yesterday after he was discovered hitting himself over the head with a log. Members of his religious group have been hiding in a cave since November, believing that the world would end in May.

Officials said that he may have attempted suicide after realising his prediction had been wrong. Mr Kuznetsov has been declared to be suffering from schizophrenia and held in a psychiatric hospital for treatment. He was brought back to the remote village of Nikolskoye, 435 miles southeast of Moscow, to help the authorities to persuade his followers to leave the cave amid fears that it was collapsing. Mr Kuznetsov was found with a head wound in a barn at his home after going out for firewood.

“It was an attempted suicide. Pyotr put his head on a tree stump and started hitting his head with a log. He is in hospital with a head wound,” said Oleg Melnichenko, deputy goveror of the Penza region. Doctors described his condition as stable after an emergency operation. The local prosecutor Grigori Zhitenev said that Mr Kuznetsov’s motives included “that the end of the world has not come”.

The spiritual leader had forecast the Apocalypse but did not join 35 followers who barricaded themselves in the cave and threatened to blow up gas cylinders if officials tried to force them out.

Mr Kuznetsov, 43, was present when a woman and two children emerged from the cave on Wednesday. A day earlier, 14 members, including two other children, had been forced to leave when part of the cave collapsed under the pressure of spring floodwater.

“Pyotr said God had collapsed the cave and to go against God is a great sin,” Mr Melnichenko said. Seven women left the cave last week.

Officials said that nine women and two men remained underground and were divided over whether to come out. They had not been told about Mr Kuznetsov’s apparent suicide attempt and an Orthodox priest with specialist knowledge of apocalyptic literature had been brought in to talk to them.

The group agreed this month to end their vigil on April 27, when the Russian Orthodox Church marks Easter. Many of those who have left the cave continue to wait for the end of the world at Mr Kuznetsov’s wooden cottage in Nikolskoye.

Mr Kuznetsov’s sect calls itself the True Orthodox Church, a splinter group whose members reject processed food and consider that bar codes are satanic symbols. Valeri Trazanov, a regional government official, said: “The people in the cave consider themselves Orthodox Christians and not cult members.”

Villagers said that the cult followers, who wear long black robes, came to Nikolskoye from other regions of Russia and even from Belarus. Police and local authorities have engaged in months of diplomacy to persuade them to leave.

Sect members were given a cow after they left the cave because they refused to drink milk from cartons that carried bar codes. They have refused to talk to journalists but otherwise appear to be in good health despite five months underground.

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