Russian general killed in Moscow scooter blast by Ukrainian agents

Ukrainian security services sources say Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov was a completely legitimate target as the head of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical defence forces

Ukraine has claimed one of the boldest assassinations of a senior military officer since Russia’s invasion began – killing a general using a bomb hidden in an electric scooter in Moscow less than 24 hours after it accused him of overseeing the use of chemical weapons against Kyiv’s troops.

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the chief of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection troops, was killed outside an apartment building on Ryazansky Prospekt, in southeast Moscow, when the device detonated. He is the most senior Russian military official to be killed in an assassination away from the front lines since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine started nearly three years ago.

Unverified video footage of the attack circulating on social media showed two men exiting the building to get into a car followed by a large explosion, Later images showed two bodies lying in the snow. The second man is believed to be Kirillov’s assistant. Russian state news agencies reported that the device had an explosive force equivalent to 300g (0.7lb) of TNT.

“The liquidation of the chief of the radiation and chemical protection troops of the Russian Federation is the work of the SBU,” a source said. Another described 54-year-old Kirillov as a “completely legitimate” target.

Russian investigators said they had opened a criminal case into the murder of two servicemen. Law enforcement sources told Russian media a terrorism case was likely to be opened.

A day earlier, Ukrainian state prosecutors were reported to have charged Kirillov in absentia with the alleged use of banned chemical weapons. The SBU said it had recorded more than 4,800 cases of chemical weapons being used on the battlefield since February 2022.

In May, the US State Department said that it had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison gas first deployed in the First World War, against Ukrainian troops. In October, Britain imposed sanctions on Kirillov and his nuclear defence forces for using riot control agents and over multiple reports of the use of chloropicrin.

Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat. Kirillov, who took up his post 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.

The SBU has carried out numerous assassinations, mostly in occupied Ukraine, since Russia’s initial invasion in 2014. The most high-profile cases include the 2022 killing of Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, in a car bomb attack, the murder of pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in a 2023 cafe bombing, and the shooting last year of a Russian submarine commander accused of war crimes by Kyiv.

John Foreman, formerly the UK military attache in Moscow from 2019 to 2022, described the incident as a “monumental failure” of Russia’s own security service, the FSB.

Russian former president Dmitry Medvedev, now a senior security official and key Putin ally, told a meeting shown on state TV that Moscow would avenge what he called an act of terrorism.

“Law enforcement agencies must find the killers in Russia,” said Mr Medvedev. “Everything must be done to destroy the masterminds (of the killing) who are in Kyiv. We know who these masterminds are. They are the military and political leadership of Ukraine,” he said.

There was no immediate comment from President Putin.

Ukraine’s SBU announced later on Tuesday that it had uncovered 12 agents spying for Russia on locations hosting F-16 fighter jets and air defence systems across Ukraine.

It said on the Telegram messenger that it detained “the biggest network of agents” in Ukraine’s north and south.

On the frontline, Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Moscow has intensified its attacks in the piece of Ukrainian-held territory in Russia’s Kursk region.

“For the third day, the enemy is conducting intensive assaults in the Kursk region,” Gen Syrskyi said, adding that Russia was “actively” using North Korean troops who were taking significant losses.

Ukraine has held a sliver of Kursk since a daring cross-border assault in August that caught Russian forces off guard.