Kyiv, Ukraine – Igor Kirillov, the 54-year-old general who led Russia's nuclear defense force, was killed a day after Ukrainian intelligence accused him of ordering the use of banned chemical weapons against Ukrainian soldiers.
Bombs hidden in a scooter parked outside a Moscow apartment building blew up Kirillov and his aide on Tuesday.
Before his death, Kirillov used to talk to Russia to say without any evidence that Kyiv “wants to make a dirty bomb” and the United States runs “military laboratories” in Ukraine to “breed” mosquitoes that spread anthrax and cholera.
The blast took place in a densely populated and traffic-heavy district southeast of Moscow.
It was the fourth hit by the Russian military in less than two months. Ukraine does not always claim responsibility for these attacks, but its officials often praise them on television.
In this case, a Ukrainian official, speaking to Al Jazeera and several other unknown media, said that he was the one who started the bombs that killed Kirillov and his assistant.
Kyiv has been waging a decade-long campaign to undercut the Russian military and officials, as well as some of their supporters, along with Ukrainian separatists and turncoats based in Moscow.
The blast shattered the doors and windows of the building and blew snow into cars parked nearby. It was like “the breath of death”, according to Kirillov's former neighbor.
Ulyana, who used to walk her dog near the army chief's house, said that the attack made her “think more about what your neighbors get”.
“You feel that war is knocking at your door. You feel the breath of death, even the death of someone who deserved it,” the 34-year-old, who participated in anti-Kremlin rallies before leaving Russia last year, told Al Jazeera.
He unconsciously repeated the words of the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU).
“He was a legitimate target and he should have been killed,” an SBU source told Al Jazeera. “And on our list there are many Russian military criminals.”
The campaign to oust Ukraine “is not against international law, it is about attacking the enemy, which is against the enemy,” Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevich told Al Jazeera.
The most recent victim is Mikhail Shatsky, who was killed on December 12 in a Moscow armory.
On December 9, a car bomb killed “prison chief” Sergey Evsyukov in the rebel-held city of Donetsk. In July 2022, an explosion at the Olenivka prison killed 53 Ukrainian prisoners and injured more than 100.
In mid-November, Captain Valery Trankovsky, who commanded the artillery barrage from Crimea, bled to death after his car exploded in the city of Sevastopol. One of the attacks killed 29 civilians in central Ukraine in July 2022.
The campaign to end the crisis is moving forward, reaching Russia and targeting the Kremlin's warlords.
“What interests me is its scale,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told Al Jazeera.
He added that the campaign will continue even if Kyiv and Moscow negotiate an end to the war or a peace agreement.
“Retribution will come to war criminals regardless of the legal time and location,” Romanenko said. “They should feel sorry, (and) their families should see how their husband is being tortured for a crime until his (death) sentence is handed down.”
Ukrainian separatist leaders and strongmen in the southeastern region of Donbas were the first victims.
Ukrainian workers often bombard them – in elevators, restaurants and cars – leading to jokes about Kyiv's “elevator power”.
Many casualties followed a full-scale attack on Russia in 2022 who are considered partners they were shot, shot and shot in the occupied territories.
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have also targeted people who provide important information, such as the location of military units, electronic equipment or air defense equipment, to Russia.
They have a group of volunteers who combine social media and archives, use intelligence tools (OSINT) to identify Russian military leaders accused of war crimes – and insist on their execution.
“Yes, I call for the violence they killed,” Maksym Bakhmatov, a businessman and occasional comedian, told Al Jazeera in November 2022.
He led the effort to release the personal information of 1,400 Russian soldiers accused of torturing, raping and killing civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha in early 2022.
Testimony from Ukrainian government officials and international human rights organizations links Russian forces to atrocities in Bucha, whose name has become synonymous with a terrible massacre of civilians. Russia denies the claims.
The campaign “moved” to Russia just a few months after the main attack, but it started with mistakes.
In August 2022, a bomb blew up the car of Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian “philosopher” who has said that Ukrainians should be “killed, killed, killed”.
But the explosion instead killed Dugin's daughter, Darya, who also supported the war.
Then in May 2023, a car bomb injured Zakhar Prilepin, a senior separatist and author who admitted to military violence in Donbas.
In December 2023, Ilya Kiva, a Ukrainian Kremlin representative who had fled to Russia, was gunned down in a forest outside Moscow shortly after filming a video mocking Kyiv.
'The greatest possible success'
Currently, Kirillov is the most senior Russian official under the watchful eye of Ukrainian intelligence.
The killing of such a general is “the highest achievement,” according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at the University of Bremen in Germany.
“This is a job that we should be proud of until the end of days for everyone working in intelligence,” he told Al Jazeera.
He said that the Moscow brass never used the “elevator forces” joke.
“And they should,” he said – even though Ukrainian intelligence has little ability to supply the explosives and find agents to carry out the attacks.
Moscow he said that Uzbekistan dropped a bomb near Kirillov's house in exchange for $100,000 to be transferred to Europe.
Kirillov was killed shortly after attending a security meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kirillov's death “reemphasizes that no matter how much we win the war, how happy we are, how much we talk about victories, the other side always has the opportunity to beat us painfully,” journalist and official pro-Kremlin Andrey. Medvedev wrote on Telegram.
He added that the killing would distract Ukrainians every day from hearing bad news and rumours reduce the registration age from 25 to 18.
However, some Ukrainians do not feel disturbed.
“We are in deep trouble. We are losing the war, we have wasted eight years” between the 2014 terrorist attacks and the Russian invasion, Diana Hordienko, a nurse in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.
“The Russians will retaliate and many innocent people will die,” he said.
Friday morning, The Russian bombs were launched a missile attack in Kyiv that killed one and injured seven.