Russia says suspect arrested in murder of top general in Moscow – National
The Russian security service announced on Wednesday that it had arrested a suspect Killing of a high-ranking general in Moscow.
The suspect was described as an Uzbek citizen recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov was killed on Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his Moscow home, a day after Ukrainian security services filed criminal charges against him. His assistant also died in the attack. A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) did not name the suspect but said he was born in 1995. According to a statement from the FSB, the suspect himself stated that he was recruited by Ukrainian secret services. AP cannot confirm the conditions under which the suspect spoke to security services.
The FSB said the suspect was promised a $100,000 reward and permission to move to a European Union country in exchange for killing Kirillov.
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The agency said the suspect traveled to Moscow on Ukraine’s instructions, where he picked up a homemade explosive device. He placed the device on an electric scooter and parked it at the entrance to the apartment building where Kirillov lived.
The suspect then rented a car to monitor the location and set up a camera that livestreamed the crime scene to his handlers in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. When Kirillov was seen leaving the building, the suspect detonated the bomb. The suspect faces a prison sentence of up to life in prison, the FSB said.
The suspect was arrested in a village in the Moscow region, according to Interior Ministry employee Irina Volk, who was quoted by the Russian state news agency TASS.
Kirillov, 54, was chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical defense forces and was sanctioned by several countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada, over his actions in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On Monday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.
Russia denied any use of chemical weapons in Ukraine and accused Kiev of using toxic agents in the fight.
Kirillov, who took up his current job in 2017, was one of the most prominent representatives of these allegations. He held numerous briefings in which he accused the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning attacks with radioactive substances – claims that Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed as propaganda.
An SBU official said Tuesday that the agency was behind the attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, described Kirillov as a “war criminal and a completely legitimate target.”
The SBU official provided a video that purportedly showed the bombing. It shows two men leaving a building just before an explosion fills the frame.
Russia’s top state investigative agency said it viewed Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that it was “obvious” that Ukraine was behind Kirillov’s killing. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Kiev “does not shy away from terrorist methods.”
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Illia Novikov contributed to this report from Kiev, Ukraine.
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