Ukraine claims killing of Russian general in Moscow bomb attack

A senior Russian general has been killed by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security agency levelled criminal charges against him.

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed as he left for his office.

His assistant also died in the bombing, which was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports.

Images from the scene showed shattered windows and scorched and blackened brickwork.

A Ukrainian official said the country’s security service carried out the attack.

The general was under sanctions from several countries, including the UK and Canada, for his actions in Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.

An official with the SBU said the agency was behind the attack, describing Lt Gen Kirillov as a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target”.

The SBU has said it recorded more than 4,800 occasions when Russia used 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 deployed in the First World War, against Ukrainian troops.

Russia has denied using chemical weapons in Ukraine and has in turn accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.

Lt Gen Kirillov, who took his current job in 2017, was one of the most high-profile figures to level those accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances — claims that Ukraine and its western allies rejected as propaganda.

Russia’s state investigative agency said it is investigating Lt Gen 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, described the attack as an attempt by Kyiv to distract public attention from its military failures and vowed that its “senior military-political leadership will face inevitable retribution”.

Over the past year, Russia has been on the front foot in the war in Ukraine, grinding deeper into the eastern region of Donetsk despite heavy losses. Ukraine tried to change the dynamic with an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, but has continued to slowly lose ground in its own territory.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, several prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks.

Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian TV channels and the daughter of Kremlin-linked nationalist Alexander Dugin, died in a 2022 car bombing that investigators suspected was aimed at her father.

Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, died in April 2023, when a statuette given to him at a party in St Petersburg exploded.

A Russian woman, who said that she presented the figurine on orders of a contact in Ukraine, was convicted in the case and handed a 27-year sentence.

In December 2023, Illia Kiva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian legislator who fled to Russia, was shot and killed near Moscow.

The Ukrainian military intelligence lauded the killing, warning that other “traitors of Ukraine” would share the same fate.

On December 9, an explosive device was placed under a car in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Donetsk, reportedly targeting Sergei Yevsyukov, the former head of the Olenivka Prison where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war died in a missile strike in July 2022.

One other person was injured in the blast. Russian authorities said they had detained a suspect in the attack.