A senior Russian general was killed by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow on Tuesday, a day after Ukraine's security service filed criminal charges against him. A Ukrainian official said the attack was carried out by the service.
Lt. Gen Igor KirillovThe head of the nuclear, biological and chemical security forces was killed on his way to his office. Kirillov's aide was also killed in the attack.
Kirillov, 54, was under sanctions from several countries, including Britain and Canada, for his actions in Moscow's war in Ukraine. On Monday, the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.
An SBU official said the agency was behind the attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, called Kirillov “a war criminal and a completely legitimate target.”
The SBU has said it has recorded more than 4,800 occasions when Russia used chemical weapons on the battlefield since its full-scale attack in February 2022. What weapons were used? In May, the US State Department said it had recorded the first deployment of chloropicran, a toxic gas. In World War I, against Ukrainian troops.
Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and has in turn accused Kiev of using toxic agents in the war.
Krylov, who took up his current job in 2017, was one of the most high-profile figures to level the allegations. He has held numerous briefings accusing the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive materials – claims that Ukraine and its Western allies have dismissed as propaganda.
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According to Russian news reports, the bomb used in Tuesday's attack was detonated remotely. Photos taken from the scene show broken windows and charred brickwork.
Investigators work near a scooter at the site where the head of Russia's nuclear, biological and chemical defense forces, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, and his aide, Ilya Polikarpov, were mounted near a residential apartment block in Moscow, Russia. He was killed by explosives. Tuesday, December 17, 2024.
AP Photo
The SBU official provided video of what he said was the bombing. It shows two people exiting a building as an explosion fills the frame.
Russia's top state investigative agency said it was treating Kirillov's death as a case of terrorism, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia's Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, called the attack a distraction from Kiev's military failures. called it an attempted ouster and vowed that its “senior military-political leadership would face inevitable retaliation.”
Over the past year, Russia has been on the front foot in the war, grinding deep into eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region despite heavy losses. Ukraine tried to change the dynamic with incursions into Russia's Kursk region, but it continued to slowly lose ground on its own territory.
Since the Russian invasion, several prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks by Ukraine.
Daria Dogina, the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, a commentator on Russian TV channels and a nationalist ideologue linked to the Kremlin, was killed in 2022 in a car bombing that investigators suspect was aimed at her father.
Vladlin Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, died in April 2023, when a statue of him at a party in St. Petersburg exploded. A Russian woman, who said she presented the statue at the behest of a contact in Ukraine, was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison.
In December 2023, Ilya Kiva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia, was shot dead near Moscow. Ukrainian military intelligence praised the killing, warning that other “traitors of Ukraine” would do the same.
On December 9, a bomb planted under a car in the Russian-held Ukrainian city of Donetsk killed Sergei Yusyukov, the former head of Olenyukka prison, where a July 2022 missile attack killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war. was injured in the explosion. Russian authorities said they had detained a suspect involved in the attack.
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Associated Press writer Ilya Novokov contributed from Kiev, Ukraine.
and copy 2024 Canadian Press