A top Russian general was killed by a bomb hidden in a motor scooter outside his Moscow home on Tuesday, a day after Ukrainian security services filed criminal charges against him.
A Ukrainian official said the country’s security service carried out the attack. Lieutenant General. Igor Kirillov, the head of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed on the way to his office.
According to Russian news reports, Kirillov’s assistant also died in the bombing, which was triggered remotely. Images from the crime scene showed broken windows and burnt and blackened brickwork.
Kirillov was sanctioned by several countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada, over his actions in the Moscow War in 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.
An SBU official told the Associated Press that he was behind the attack. A similar claim was made by an SBU official to the Reuters news agency.
The SBU said it had registered more than 4,800 cases of Russia using chemical weapons on the battlefield since its full-scale invasion in February 2022. In May, the US State Department said in a statement that it had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison gas first used against Ukrainian troops during World War I.
Russia denied the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine and in return accused Kiev of using toxic agents in combat.
Russian President Medvedev vows immediate revenge
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.
Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s leadership should expect immediate revenge for the killing, RIA news agency reported, accusing Ukraine of “cowardly and despicable attacks.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, several prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks.
Russia’s central bank is forecast to raise its key interest rate to 23 percent this month, with military spending consuming a third of Russia’s overall budget. Andrew Chang explains how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine is causing inflation to skyrocket and what that means for civilians.
Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian television channels and daughter of the pro-Kremlin nationalist ideologist Alexander Dugin, has died in a car bomb attack in 2022 who investigators suspected was her father.
Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, died in St. Petersburg in April 2023. when a statuette given to him at a party exploded. A Russian woman was convicted in the case, saying she gave the figure on behalf of a contact in Ukraine and imposed a 27-year prison sentence.
In December 2023, Illia Kiva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian parliamentarian who fled to Russia, was shot dead near Moscow. Ukrainian military intelligence praised the killing and warned that other “traitors to Ukraine” would share the same fate.
On the battlefield, RIA reported that Russian forces had taken control of the settlement of Hannivka in eastern Ukraine. Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield report.
The Ukrainian Air Force said on Tuesday it had shot down 20 drones launched by Russia.
The Telegram messenger said that Russia had launched a total of 31 drones and that another 10 had not reached their targets. One was still in the air.
